


Welcome Home, Father Jim 7 : Thy Body In Remembrance Of You

by Mod J (AlienNerd)



Series: Welcome Home, Father Jim [7]
Category: Captain America (Movies), James "Bucky" Barnes - Fandom, Supernatural, The Avengers
Genre: AU, AU Priest!Bucky, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Alternate Universe - Religious, Anal, Barnes - Freeform, Bottom!Bucky, Bucky - Freeform, Bucky Angst, Bucky Barnes - Freeform, Bucky Barnes NSFW, Bucky NSFW, Come Eating, Come Swallowing, Crossover, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Cyborg Bucky Barnes, Cyborgs, Demons, Depravity, Ehanced, Erotica, Foreplay, Frottage, Gay Sex, Ghost Sex, Ghosts, Hair Pulling, James Buchanan Barnes - Freeform, MCU Smut, Male Friendship, Male Protagonist, Male Solo, Masturbation, Multi, Mutant, NSFW, Pansexual, Pansexual Bucky Barnes, Priest Kink, Psionic Bondage, Psionic Sex, Psionics, Psychic Abilities, Religious Conflict, Religious Content, Religious Guilt, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Rimming, Series, Smut, Stucky - Freeform, Supernatural - Freeform, The Winter Soldier - Freeform, Welcome Home Father Jim, bucky smut, cyborg, incubus, mcu - Freeform, priest!bucky, steve rogers - Freeform, winter soldier - Freeform, winter soldier smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-08
Updated: 2019-02-17
Packaged: 2019-06-23 13:43:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 14
Words: 25,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15607548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlienNerd/pseuds/Mod%20J
Summary: Hard times have come to Jansenhaven. It isn't long until Father Jim comes across a thread. Perhaps it's just a small thing a string unraveling from the past...or perhaps it is the red string of fate & will lead to his world coming undone. Be careful Father, there's no rest for the wicked.





	1. Jim I

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Micha for believing in me](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Micha+for+believing+in+me).



The blue girl appeared for the first time during the first snow. Jim had been lost in distracting distorted thoughts whilst walking to the store for a pack of smokes. With which he had done the opposite of what he thought he'd do: double down on them, smoking close to two packs a day. He had actually began smoking so much he had given himself nicotine poisoning not once but a few times. It was the ability to duck out that drew him. He had been so unnerved as of late that taking five mins out of what he was doing to smoke a butt was the only reason he was still hanging on. People said they were a crutch, well he was using them like a walker barely able to move to the next task in his day till he lit up again. A little part of him kept saying  _'It's not like your doing any good at anything but smoking.'_

He crossed the street hardly seeing what was in front of him when the flakes started coming down. Startled from berating himself & having an internal conversation with the part of his mind who was his perfectionist subpersonality while he hardly knew that was what he was doing, he looked up toward the corner the store was on only to immediately notice a child in a pale blue jacket further down the street. And for no reason at all, felt something was terribly wrong. A little girl dressed appropriately for the weather had no right felling so...out of place.

There was no one else around and even at a distance, his sight was good enough to tell him the child was not a local. Being a small town it was quite easy to remember most of the people in it and being enhanced, his already keen eyes had vision just this side of the line between perfect & unnaturally good, his memory outside of his own life was photogenic and highly accurate when it came to faces, one of the reasons why he couldn't get Steve or Shane out of his head. Living here for 6 years, Father Jim was sure he knew the young children from the immediate area. Hell, had baptized a bunch of them. He felt all of a sudden much colder as if the temp had dropped with the wind kicking up.

What lay before him made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. At 11:40 on a Tuesday morning every other child was at school or homesick, not standing in the middle of the sidewalk apparently staring into nothing. It was wrong to him that a child this young be unsupervised. She didn't even seem to be standing in front of the house on that part of the street. As he thought over what he should do, the snow thickened and the child remains rooted to the spot. His eye took in details of the little girl as his mind tried to place her somewhere in town that made sense. She had a pair of cream colored knitted mittens on her hands and a pair of toffee colored slacks on. Her hair was so pale blonde it bordered on being white. It was plaited in the front pulling her bangs up from her face and where the braid ended over her left temple it had been secured with a long ribbon which matched her coat. It rippled and flounced on the wind. On that same side of her forehead were two dark dots as if someone had drawn two evenly spaced circles in magic marker on her face above her pale brows and stone wash blue eyes.

Perhaps she was visiting from somewhere else, winter vacation hadn't begun here but she didn't appear to be school aged just yet. Maybe she was lost, having wandered out of the yard of the home of whatever family she may be visiting with. Jim didn't like all the uncertainty her presence had established in the few minutes he had known she existed. Without knowing he was going to do it he walked past the corner market and toward the child. As he did so it seemed the snow was thickening further or the wind was playing with it in a manner that was making it harder to see. It felt as if the sky itself was darkening on that one street. As he neared her the blue of her coat & ribbon dimmed and faded. He widened his stride but now it seemed she was drifting back from him in an odd manner that did not correspond with the movement of a person walking backward and being further obscured by the snow. Her eyes only seemed traceable and even though she was hard to make out, she appeared to be shedding a pale cool glow. As she disappeared from view her ribbon began to loosen and soon it slipped from her hair. It rode on the wind and as Jim reached out his frost-covered left hand to her, it's cold silk slipped right onto it.

He looked up to see if he could see the child ahead of him on the sidewalk. He saw nothing but the ground snow and houses. As he stared a squirrel darted out from a bush to his right scaring him half to death, he was on the verge of shouting when he saw the small animal. The squirrel stood on the sidewalk seeming to wait for Jim to say something so he did.

"Who...was that?"

Jim looked down at his open hand and was further disturbed to see the ribbon had disappeared as well.

When Jim came back to himself he turned around and headed back down the street. He remembered where he had been going and why. He returned to the corner and went into the store. He purchased the cigarettes and when he went to leave a bird small and round landed on a tree branch of a bush across the street from him directly at eye level from him. As he walked toward it the bird took flight and flew directly at him landing on his shoulder as he stood in the crosswalk having walked halfway across the street. He stood still and wiggled his shoulders trying to get the bird to fly it away again but it seemed to want a ride on his shoulder across the street. When he reached the curb it did not move.

"Okay, then little friend..." he said. the bird made a peep in response it seemed and he continued walking and at the next corner a gray and white rabbit came out from the side of the house there and began hopping along in front of him. Perplexed he watched as the bunny seemed to be leading him toward his house and indeed when he came close to it, the bunny hopped across his lawn and up to his door. Confused by the animal's behavior, Jim took out his keys and when he did so the bird flew away finally.

To the bunny Father Jim said "Thanks, I'll take it from here." and amazingly the bunny turned its back hopped a few steps then looked back over it's shoulder. It remained that way until he inserted his key into the lock and opened the door. Seeming satisfied, it began hopping off into the dry grey bushes. Once inside Jim returned his jacket to the closet and went to the kitchen to set up for cocoa.

Jim was quite sure Christopher Barry, the day clerk at the hardware store, was selling marijuana. He wondered if he shouldn't pick some up because maybe being doped up would make him feel less like he's lost touch with reality.


	2. Jim & Shane

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The days have become harder and the nights harsher. Jim finds himself drowning in the sins of his past. On the edge of mental breakdown Shane arrives in the nick of time but can he save Jim before it's too late?

That annoying thing is digging at him again. Father Jim's eyes shoot open and he lays in bed feeling echoes of the pain. There is an enormous and deep throb of an aching pain from his hip shooting upward then sharp pains that radiate out from a place close to his spine on the left side in what feels like jagged streaks of raw electricity cutting through his flesh. They spread through the upper portion of his back, the two sensations alternating for hours and hours. When it's cold like this he feels every inch of the metal inside him. The alloy which contains components of adamantium coats half of his ribs and much of his spine. The cold gets in the metal. He takes more baths than showers to ward off the old pain but until the temp goes above 34, he is forced to look at this ugly reminder of his trauma. Day in, day out, worse, all night, every night, the pain is unrelenting. It puts him on edge and makes him irritable.

It's been creeping for weeks,  _'...a silent stalker just like I was.'_  he thinks. He's slowly fraying at his mental and emotional edges. As the days grow longer and colder he grows more isolated, paranoid, pessimistic and more depressed. The loneliness he often feels deepens further and further all winter until spring when it lets up and he comes crashing forward through it all, clawing his way to the sun and a positive outlook as if being held down under the weight of the sea. But until then his very spirit feel as if it is drowning in the darkened days, cold cold nights & the horrible searing pain.

Sitting in the bathroom at 1:39 in the morning, staring into the wall across from the toilet, eyes wide and unblinking, none of the thoughts in his head can connect to the end or point of themselves. Time after time he tries to think of something to help him out of this trail of nothing.

"Can't stand i-"

"...a shower-"

"You're a murd-"

All day he had been fighting the sensation of not being able to land his mind on any subject or task. Restlessly he went from one activity to the next feeling exhausted & weak but driven to move, go, do. He tried writing sermons. He tried doing the dishes. He tried eating. Then sleeping. Then going for a walk. He didn't get past his mailbox before the urge to do something else came back. Finally lying down to go to bed had apparently been the wrongest thing he could do because the feeling grew so fast in intensity he felt physical vertigo from the sensation of his mind trying to sift through thoughts so fast. He had gotten out of bed and gone to the bathroom turned on the light and just sat on the closed lid of the toilet unsure if he was going to be ill or pass out. Meanwhile, terrible thoughts and self-loathing dialog drowned out all reason.

He's frozen there because his mind really wants to go somewhere and because he won't let it, he can't focus on anything. He doesn't want to feel anymore, doesn't want to look down that dark hole again. He doesn't want to think about it anymore.

"Waste of lif-"

"Let me-"

"Help! I ca-"

"...my sins, so man-"

Unable to stand it much more, beginning to feel he can not breathe, he begins to try the only thing he can think of.

"Shane-!"

"Just monster in huma-"

"-has to know I'm he-"

"Shaaane!!"

"I deserve all the pain-"

"SHANE!!"

"- breath I can not-"

"Buck...?" an echoing voice chimes in the bathroom. The echo multiplies and expands and contracts; the sound waves contorting and uncoiling. It is the auditory equivalent of a kaleidoscopic image. It travels far through the spirit realm to reach him quickly.

The medicine cabinet mirror grows dim as if someone has turned down the lights in a room behind it. Jim's eyes snap to it and he fights to keep them trained there.

"Shane I-"

"-heart attack-"

A plume of a smoking melty substance the color of Shane's true self pours out of the surface of the mirror. It pools in the sink then pours to the floor wherein a thick runnel, it slides across the floor stopping at Jim's bare feet where Shane starting head first is beginning to materialize. He leans back from the waist as if under the ectoplasm he had been kneeling in child's pose. He rests each of his hands on Jim's knees. "What's happened, are you all right?"

Seeing the insanity of Shane entering the room through a dimensional rift brings Jim back to the here and now. The cord to the racing thoughts has been cut, freeing his mind once more.

Suddenly gasping like a drowning man, Jim tilts his head back pushing his hair from his tired stinging eyes. " Uh-huh...I'm f- I'm fine."

"Jim, no you are not! This is the third time this week! I think you need one of your humans, not me..."

"I'll be ok, it's just this is a bad time of year for me. I can't ask anyone else to go through this for me." After a silence of several seconds continuing "You said you wanted... I... I don't want to be alone and awake all night. It feels like everyone is gone... like the only thing left is what's in my head. Can you stay with me?"

"Of course. Come on." Shane stands up and offers Jim his hand. He is completely nude and smells as if he has just had a bath with milk, honey, and petals from some forbidden sweet flower.

Jim takes it and Shane leads him to the bedroom.

At the side of the bed, Shane pushes him to sit down. He then leans in and says "Will you let me take your mind off it for a while?"

Jim, who had begun in the last weeks of September to need to masturbate to fall asleep, feels it may be the only thing that can help. The last two months have been so much harder. Jim is so mentally drained he can't focus on his fantasies and finish once he starts jerking off. His mind drifts off topic usually too stressful daily tasks or to very quickly changing and sometimes negative or scary thoughts. He still checks in with Chantoya before bed but is very good at sounding cheery over the phone. Then he lays in the dark trying not to but staring into the place where his memories should be. The longer nights feel miles longer, leagues deep. He wishes he couldn't remember everything now as much as he can't remember what he was doing for 30 years.

Something starts seeping out of there every year at this time. Like the smell of rotting corpses, a trail of them he left in his wake. A feeling that leaves him terrified to be alone with himself invades his life. There are no pictures or thoughts just feelings, awful awful feelings. Sometimes he's so angry & bitter, others so defeated & lost. There's despair in there, an ocean of it. There are times where he thinks all the good things around him are just too good and will self-destruct at any moment. He has a paranoid idea that he is still somewhere horrible doing horrible things and having horrible things done to him with the only reminder of reality being the insidious cold pain, the rest of what he thinks is his life is just a dream or delusion that may end any moment. Other times he feels almost hostile in his desire for the mental strain to end. He wants to claw out the pain, tear it out like one could tear out their hair. These feelings emanate from that hole, that empty looking place that feels full of foulness and the dark starts to leech the light out of his daily life.

Then as his other battle fatigue symptoms get stronger every other area of his life suffers. He becomes wary, sensitive others negativity and isolates himself even as he is internally begging not to be left alone. He loses interest in things he enjoys like writing sermons and keeping after the church and rectory. His appetite wanes no matter the meal and eventually, he ends up forcing himself to find and eat anything at least once a day because he loses the desire to even eat. Sleep when it comes is shallow and though he can't remember, full of unpleasantness caused by nightmares. He feels sex is antidotal to the thing keeping him awake, keeping him alone, keeping him cold. It too can be made of only feelings, no images nor words can be articulated but you feel the stimulation and you feel the bliss it causes. It's an undeniable, a force of nature; love is the cure for pain.

"Be my guest, I'm so tired of being crazy. Give me something else to think about." Jim sighs. He was trying to sound sarcastic and jaded, but he is just so weary. Already Jim's mind is quite ready to retreat into the safety of Shane's embrace.

Shane kisses him on the lips; no tongue, just a sweet tender soft sensations like a hug, a gentle caress. He pushes Jim back and down onto the mattress then climbs onto his lap. He leans down again kissing Father Jim. He brushes Jim's hair away from his eyes and cups his hands around Jim's face. He kisses him again and again, sucking his lips, tasting Jim's last cigarette. They kiss like this for nearly thirty seconds by which time Jim is wholly invested, sighing "Uuuhmph...aaah!" as Shane slips along Jim's lips with the tip of his tongue.

He grinds his ass on Jim's lap. With his left, he holds a hand to Jim's cheek. In the dark room, a tear rolls into the line between his thumb and Jim's cheek. "You crying, babyboy? Should I stop?"

"No, don't. I'm j-please," he sobs quietly, "... Jus' make me feel good, okay? My mind... I.. wh-..."

"What? You can tell me."

 _'Is there such a thing as mental pain??? I feel as if my thoughts are wounds that are festering...'_  he thinks in a quiet voice.

"Forget it..." he says thinking  _'I wish...it would all go away.'_  "Can you make it feel better, Shane?" His voice is small like a child's for a moment. Shane now understands another truth of how Jim's mind works. The road to damnation for this one is not that of entitled lust but of terror & desperation. Without the structure of his current lifestyle, he would be but a lost abandoned & abused child.

"Yes. All right, Father." He replies.

Shane leans down kissing him again. His lips drift down his chin and along his jawline kissing away cool salty tears. He kisses a line down Jim's neck and onto his left shoulder. Jim can feel the soft kisses there like butterflies landing on him. He wants to say "No not there, I hate it, I hate them, hate what I was, hate what I did, never there, it doesn't deserve..." but knows that's just a knee jerk reaction he's having because of what time of year it is. It's the darkest time of the year. The time where everything appears to have died and feels like it may never come back to life. The time of year where he hurts like the old man he really is. The time where things inside he wasn't born with feel cold and heartless, the way Father Jim perceives his alter ego the Winter Soldier to be.

Shane lifts Jim's arm and begins kissing a line down the inside of his arm to his elbow where he lingers, licking and kissing the cold metal, feeling its smooth cool surface on his tongue and lips. Jim's eyes drift close and he lets the sensation surround his mind a blessed cocoon of soft tender sweet feathers. "O-oooh...ooh!" He moans rolling his hips under Shane, pressing his dick harder into Shane's. At the apex of the thrust, he holds his hips still, thighs shaking as erotic thrill travels down both of his legs and up into his belly.

Jim closes the door on his painful thoughts and sensations a little, shutting out as much as he can. He focuses on Shane, on how his body is interpreting the signals Shane's velvet tongue gives him.  _'...sooth me like a child... please... just for a little while...'_  a broken part of Father Jim begs, quivering under the pleasant sexual energy building within. Shane's mouth travels further down his inner arm down to his hand where he places Jim's middle finger slowly in his mouth. Sucking it, tongue massaging, the heat of his mouth melting down Jim's arm for his brain to accept and define sensation to his nervous system.

From this, he moves back down to Jim's chest sucking each of his nipples in turn, trying to make it last by giving very thoughtful foreplay. It feels so good Jim lifts both arms and hugs Shane about the head pressing his pec harder into Shane's mouth. _'Yes...help me...help me get away. I'm so afraid... the pain...so afraid of...'_

In response Shane sucks harder on the nipple, pressing the tip of his tongue into the spongy flesh of it. Once in a while he gently rakes his teeth over it taking soft nips at Jim's chest. It goes on and on this way until Jim, thoroughly teased, begs panting and whimpering "Mmm...more! More more!"

Shane then moves to the next stage of their coupling. He crawls downward kissing, kissing, always kissing, a butterfly wing soft trail down Jim's body, trying to make Jim feel all the things Shane cannot say. He wants Jim to focus his attention on the moment which will indeed get his mind off his troubles. Shane knows he'll never be human so this may never be love but Jim doesn't need to feel like it isn't. After all, in his way, Shane cares for Jim. Shane wants Jim to feel strong and happy, to feel safe and loved, to feel human even with a creature such as Shane holding his hand. He will do anything to make it so. He defies his very nature for this cause.

He skips over Jim's cock, he has sucked and will suck it another time. He pushes Jim's legs up until Jim's lower back rests on his knees and thighs as he kneels on Jim's bed. He spreads Jim's ass cheeks away from his anus and lowers his head to it. He licks using his whole tongue, moaning, for Jim's body is delicious all over and he couldn't care less about doing something mortals call dirty. His wriggling spiraling tongue elicits louder and louder moaning from Jim.

"Haaahn! Haa...UHN!" groans Jim more than happy to leave words behind. He uses his right foot whose toes touch the bed beside his pillow to push and pump his upward tilted hips rubbing his hole all over Shane's eager accepting mouth."Uuuuuhnph...aah...fuuuagh! HUHN!"

Shane, a being of spirit in an artificial vessel, manipulates his flesh like so much clay, lengthening his tongue by two feet and covering it in sebaceous glands that excrete a thick mucus. He slips inside Jim allowing his tongue to bend and fold a bit so it forms in an  **S**  like shape with which he is able to massage the outer rim of Jim's hole. He undulates his tongue pressing more of it's length inside Jim. shane begins to thrust a little all the while keeping the portion of his tongue slithering on top of Jim's anus.

Jim not knowing what is happening feels a series of sensations he has never had before tries to rationally deduce what Shane is doing. Something is thick on his skin and has a lot of slip to it, something else is writhing inside and on his asshole. It feels quite wrong but the kind of wrong one revels in. He experiences a bout of thought association in the form of images. First for whatever reason is earthworms wiggling and crawling over each other in a pile covered in a light slime. Then octopus tentacles long wet and sticky. He imagines four of it's arms pressing together into a single limb that plunges into him over and over. He begrudgingly admits to himself that this horrible image is getting him more aroused. But if he is certain of nothing else, he is sure Shane has not brought an octopus to bed. With his mind so ill, he imagines Shane lit with flashing lights like rapidly occurring lightening. The lower half of his demon lover's face is tentacles like those described on many creatures eldritch. They are the color of an engorged erect cock when it's throbbing deep red with purple tones. The tentacles whip and slap around Shane's shoulder and neck. This monstrous image awakens self-loathing and lust uncompared.  _'Oh you sick fuck, what the hell is wrong with you?'_  wonders a part of his mind which normally only spectates the proceedings of his life in disgust.

Shane kisses Jim's asshole one last time before sitting up and incrementally thickening his tongue by three or four millimeters at a time. He stretches Jim's hole getting it ready to receive his penis. He allows his tongue to take it's more humanoid form as he grasps it and pulls two handfuls of the secreted mucus.

Shanes coats his penis liberally with the fluid from his tongue rubbing it on twice to create a thicker layer on his skin. He scoots back on his knees and lets Jim lower his legs a bit more. Then slowly he begins feeding his cock into Jim's soft hot asshole. Pressing gently but persistently he goes forward a few millimeters at a time stopping when Jim tightens up again waiting until Jim is comfortable again and continuing on a little at a time. When he is fully inserted, he lays on top of Jim again kissing him this time on the right side of his neck and collarbone. His vessel being easily changed like forms made of clay, Shane uses the opportunity to make his cock swell thicker in it's girth, stretching Jim open more so he will be quite relaxed once Shane begins to move at his ordinary size. "Is this ok, hunny?" He whispers. He has a particular way of saying the word in which Jim can hear him saying it the way it's spelled in the Winnie The Pooh books.

Father Jim nods against him, eager & ready for what comes next, but still, Shane takes it slow, kissing Jim and gyrating his hips in tiny circles more to massage Jim's cock under his lower abdomen than to thrust into his asshole. He wants to be sure Jim is entirely turned on and focused on what he is doing. If Jim expends a lot of energy right now he may sleep better and longer. Shane sits up again and focuses his energy then actively pours on his sexually charged aura and Jim, sucking air in through his teeth hissing, moans "haaaAAAH!! HAAAHN! HAA!"

Jim can feel his heart rate speeding up and his limbs grow cool. He wants this so bad, needs it like a parched plant needs water. The anticipation is an incredible act of sexuality itself. His dick bounces against Shane's belly as his pc muscles flex involuntarily. Clear fluid runs in small slow drips from the tip of his cock down on to his lower abdomen. His dick radiates with pleasing pulses each time Shane rubs gently against it. His nipples harden and lips tingle. He feels Shane inside of him, his thick shaft stretching Jim's ass, it's weight heavy and satisfying. All the horror of the world has been covered and hidden, making it easier for Jim to see, feel, smell & hear their lovemaking in a stark intense manner. Jim is aroused beyond the measure and would do anything for Shane to continue on.

Shane pulls back, his own cock shrinking back down to it's starting size. Then slow and steady he thrusts forward. As he does he licks his palm and slathers the remains of the thick fluid on Jim's penis takes it into his hand, stroking him in time with his thrusts. Using his thumb he rubs over the meatus of Jim's glans at the top of each stroke. Once he has established Jim to be comfortable he picks up his pace to a moderate speed. Under him, Jim moans enraptured by the stimuli. Shane watches Jim feeling him, his eyes plead with Shane, his eyebrows drawn together, mouth open in a grimace like expression of pleasure.

Jim feels each stroke of both types with a singular focus. Each thrust of Shane's hips presses upon his swelled pulsing prostate washing wave after wave of warm energy from his pelvis throughout his body. He can feel Shane's shaft enter him again and reminding him of how his fingers felt with Shane's mouth wrapped around them, it arouses him further thinking about Shane feeling a similar sensation on his wide long dick. Each stroke of Shane's hand and thumb on his shaft and glans drawing him further and further toward orgasm. His moans quicken and get louder. In response, Shane slows his movements and begins to cycle from a slow pace to a moderate one working back up once more then repeating this a third time.

When Jim is close to his orgasm again Shane releases Jim's cock and leans down on top of him. He wraps his arms around Jim cradling the base of Jim's neck and head with his right hand, bracing his forehead against Jim's. Jim hugs back holding on as if he is drowning, vocalizing and groaning in low and high pitches by turns. Shane gives him one more kiss and sits up once more. He slips his cock out of Jim and places his own penis on top of Jim's. Using one hand he strokes both their dicks off. The image of it sends Jim over the edge of ecstasy. He watches Shane's eyes feeling his hand working up & down. When thick glistening semen splashes forth from Shane's urethra Jim cums as well the sensation hitting hard and knocking the breath from him. He makes several choked sounds as he watches his own cum streak across his abdomen mixing with Shane's. Now finished Shane crawls back a bit and settles between Jim's legs to lap up the spent ejaculate.

When finished he holds Jim letting him rest his head on Shane's arm while he hugs him about the midsection. Drowsy Jim says "I didn't think you came last time. Was I so greedy I didn't even do anything for you?"

"No," Shane murmurs quietly in his ear "I don't cum the way you do. My vessel, this body needs to do most bodily functions but because of what I am, I only experience some pleasant feelings from sex in my body. It's a surface thing not a soul deep one like it is for you. Now, shhh...try to sleep, Bucky."

Tired but annoyed Jim grumbles without words.

"Oh, right sorry...Jim."

With this Jim drops off to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!


	3. Jim II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jim takes some time to mull over the events earlier in the week. He begins to understand these events may not be as random or ordinary as they may seem to someone else. He is faced with the idea that three major life crises could each be the origin of possible evil.

He had started out the door with the intention of picking up light bulbs at the hardware store. The action wasn't so simple though. Walking the slippery slushy streets of Jansenhaven Jim felt watched. It was not a nice feeling. Over time his sense of caution had proven invaluable, he couldn't remember specifically but knew with no doubt that this particular gut feeling had saved his life time and time again. After the events going and coming from the store previously he felt his hackles had risen and had not smoothed back out yet. Something was wrong, but he had no inkling what. Above his head sparrows dipped and swooped among snow and ice-clad tree branches. He hadn't really looked at the fat brown little bird that had ridden his shoulder a few days prior and now couldn't tell if it was up there using the others as camouflage.

_'Wait. What the ever loving fuck am I talking about? Why would it be following me right now? It hadn't landed on my shoulder deliberately. That's just stupid.'_

But that was the thing. It had. It had landed in front of his face, making itself known to him, before flying straight at him with no hesitation and landing on his shoulder. It did exactly as it had meant to. So now the real question was why? Why had it done that? Why did it not feel like a funny coincidence, a silly story to recount to friends over coffee? Why had it seemed that bunny thought he needed to be escorted home? Why was he disturbed by these things? Why did  _these things_  disturb him? Why had that girl...

 _'No. Uhnt uhn. Say it. If this is what your thinking about at least be honest. You fucking start lyin' and you'll believe yourself to be a cat by next weekend.'_  said a no nonsense part of his mind.  _'Why had that girl just been there one moment then gone? Who was she? What had she been doing there? Because this all lead back to that, didn't it?'_

Jim had heard of only two or three things that made any sense of it all.

Option one: He was decidedly much crazier in reality than he thought himself to be. He'd heard of people with some of the problems he had, being unable to remember things they had said and done, being told by others they had behaved out of character when they didn't remember doing so, being unable to remember where large chunks of time had gone. Add together the experience of seeing something disappear or move suddenly. It fit a little more than he liked it to.

Looking at from the outside, to someone witnessing maybe it would look like something happening in an ordinary way. So it would be seen as the person the event was happening to had blacked out while doing something then came back to it, aware something had happened with just no clue what. Perhaps slipping away just long enough for another part of themselves to make some sort of action then coming to once more.

In his mind's eye, he saw an image of himself and the girl as if someone had filmed the scene from the street and he was watching the footage. He reaches out then stops frozen in place. A woman's voice calls "It's time to come in now!" The child lifts a mitten clad hand and waves at him saying "Bye-bye!" before turning around and tearing up the driveway of the next house up on the block. There is the sound of a door closing in the blowing snow and after a few seconds, the squirrel makes it appearance jarring him back to reality.

He considered, _'Had it seemed any time had passed?'_ He didn't know, it had seemed darker for a few moments but maybe not because much time had passed, maybe the cloud cover had thickened. He had imagined himself standing stock still as if asleep or otherwise unaware of the rest of the world. Did he have a place in his head that he goes to unbidden and unexpectedly at times? Perhaps thinking 'Go to your erase place...' instead of "Go to your happy place." as his first therapist used to suggest?

But maybe it wasn't like that. How could he be sure he had only stood still during a spell or fit of some type? Maybe he had done something or spoken to her. "Oh god..." he murmured to himself. Maybe he had said something scary, rude or inappropriate without knowing it. Quickly with no invitation was the scene again playing back through his mind.

This time Jim growls viciously like a crotchety old man, "What are you looking at, you little shit!?" The child screams and turns around and runs up the drive. He wanted it to feel like it could never happen, but it didn't. And it was scary thinking someone else could be living in his head beside him. Hell, it had happened before. He had no doubt that he and The Asset (as he was referred to in those days) were two very different men. The only thing reassuring him that isn't exactly what happened was no one had come outside that day to confront the local priest about what he had just said or done to little...'Pippa'? He felt her name could be anything really and had been thinking of her only as 'The Blue Girl' till this moment.

Option two: The child was enhanced and was either here for a very specific reason which could be bad or worse, or was just awakening and somehow happened to be stumbled upon by one of the only two (as far as he knew) enhance members of the Jansenhaven community. It fit a little, oddly.

Looking at the state of their immediate settings in his memory, first the quickly thickened snow, then the child seeming to move oddly, then disappearing from view before his eyes. It all seemed like they could very well be enhanced abilities. 'So little Pippa controls the weather, can fly and become invisible.' Shit, why not? He was sure now Steve Rogers, Caleb and himself were in no way the only enhance people in the world.

If she is enhanced, what had she been doing that day? And Why? It didn't take much for that question to become quite ominous. Could be anything. The world is a terrifying place that also loves to be secretly worse than one could ever know. People are out there doing all sorts of fucked up things.

He had a brief sickening thought. ' _What if what happened to me had happened... to children? Even just one would be horrifying to find out about. He was a grown adult and finding out what had been done to him had been horrifying. What if there had been a lot more experimentation in human weapons than I knew? What if it had happened to that child?_ ' His stomach felt like a bowlful of the cold gelatinous greasy substance that can form on the top of a soup or bottom of a pan of roast being sloshed around from side to side with his every step. ' _Was little Pippa a trained weapon who had been tortured and brainwashed into compliance?_ ' He thought it awful that this was actually a valid idea. Human traffickers prey on children all the time sadly. What would stop a psychotic fascist organization from harnessing children as pawns and tools?

Okay, so say she was. Was she going to sneak in and kill him one night, not even leaving a tiny finger or baby shoe print behind? Had she been watching him? Is she now? It was all so laughably insane and largely plausible. He thought in a sick way a child assassin would be the next step up from what he had been. Imagining a child raised & trained to behave like a programmed robot to seek and destroy all targets. A person who had no idea what they really were nor what free will was. There were things he knew how to do, ways of killing, that he knew a child could grasp and might even have the advantage of when using these skills.

At that very moment, a child's high laughter rang out. It startled him a bit until he realized the local park was a block or two away. Heaving a sigh Jim said of himself ' _You're fuckin' losing it, you daft ass. There are no baby assassins._ '

Option three: She is something otherworldly. It was no less disturbing and seemed to fit in a distorted way as much as the other ideas had. But Shane's existence was a constant reminder of what was possible. He thought about the visual memories, taking in the tiniest details.

What was a supernatural thing that could appear and disappear, move in ways no human could, look strangely out of place with the rest of the real world, could cause feelings of foreboding fear and general disturbance, could be seen sometimes glowing or transparent? A vampire? No no, but perhaps something else dead... A revenant or a ghost? Was little Pippa The Blue Girl the ghost of confusion present? He thought about how the cold got colder during that one moment, the mysterious marks on her forehead. And about how the light on that part of the street had seemed to dim, the moment where he had seen the colors around her fade all but the blue of her eyes. A vague memory tickled the back of his mind. It was an image of Chantoya glowing with cool light. He thought about the feel of the ribbon which had disappeared from his fingers.

Was she? Had she died nearby? Would she have been related to someone who lived nearby? Had she been seen by anyone else in town? Maybe there was some local urban legend. Like the jersey devil or something but just something that held more truth than anyone knew. Had she needed something? They say ghosts need help crossing over sometimes.

Jesus, this was 100 % more questions than he wanted answers to. Perhaps Shane knew something that might yield something useful. The up side to that was if it was option three, Shane might know what to do.

He thought again about the strange behavior of the wildlife that day. Had he hallucinated the entire thing in the space of time it took to go to the store and walk home? Had he somehow been sleepwalking and dreamed it? He sighed heavily. He had circled back around to a different flavor of options once again.

He thought he should start trying to figure out what to do if any of the three were the cause of the situation. Option one seemed easiest: talk to a psychiatrist see if there's some therapy or medicine to help. Option two seemed the hardest to execute: find out if Hydra has 4 yrs old agents, find out how to stop her from whatever she is doing and get her some help. But he decided on the spot if that was it he would do everything in his power to free her if need be. Option three was the worst: pray that praying will keep anything terrible from happening to his friends or himself, possibly learn to exorcise spirits. Or if movies had it right, figure out how to help the ghost finish her unfinished business. It was now officially harder to tell which of these things cannot be happening and whether he should take action or not.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks, and please support by leaving your comments and kudos!


	4. Chantoya

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Having been suffering in silence even after asking for a little help from her friends, stress is taking a toll on Chantoya & Jim's time together. But life finds a way and so does love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! Thank you for all of your support!!

The sun has lowered toward the horizon and the sky has turned the color of wine which bleeds into a darkening plum then further into near black twilight. Jim and Chantoya stand on her porch as he smokes a cigarette with a thin cotton glove on his left hand he says keeps it from sticking to people and things in the cold. The afternoon had been quiet and uneventful which Chantoya felt bad about. She didn't want anything to happen, but she didn't want Jim to get tired of coming up to be here with her. She hated thinking she was wasting his time. Which it seemed was happening.

She felt helpless, restless and maybe also a bit panicked. But she refused to show it. She thought  _'If he's losing interest wouldn't my being clingy make him draw away further?'_ But maybe it wasn't even her. He had said his mental health declines a bit in the winter. And she had begun to notice him being more introverted than ever before. Even so, what could she do about that?

As he puffed away she pulled a wool shawl around herself and walked to the railing changing her position of leaning on the wall between the window in the front hall and the door. "That's so pretty." she said with a cloud of steam in front of her face.

"Hmm?" He asked apparently he had something else on his mind and hadn't been watching the sunset as she had been.

It made her sad when she realized he wasn't with her in the moment. It felt like these things would've been cherished memories if they both remembered them the same way. But if he wasn't even paying attention it would just feel like she's the only one feeling the way she does. She had never loved someone more than they loved her the way it seemed she did with Jim. It was terrible, feeling like she would never be on the same page as him.

What was worse, she was terrified to be at the house alone at this point. Some of the things she saw and heard, such impossible things, made her fear for her very life. And yet she couldn't bring herself to ask for more from him, he was in pain. A pain that could never go away. So she couldn't just ask him to move in and be her knight in shining armor.

As far as she knew, black girls & women don't get one of those. Since she was a child it seemed the world had been made under the assumption that black women rescue others, help others, cater to others. He wasn't like that of course, but she herself didn't even see she deserved help and wellness like anyone else. Her life was intertwined with the concept that she, no matter what happened, would end up serving others somehow. Not the other way around.

"Uh...the sky just now looked nice is all. Jim?" She said quietly.

"Yeah?" He responded still looking out over the railing.

"Have you been alright?" She asked.

"Yeah, sure. What makes you ask that?" He asked in return.

"Uhm...you just seem a bit tired. If you want to talk you can. You call or come visit whenever. Not just because...you know..."Chantoya mumbled no longer certain of how to say "Jim, come to me, you're not alone! I'm here for you, if you need me, I'm here!" without sounding melodramatic.

"Oh, yeah, don't worry, it's just the old winter blues. I'll be fine." he answered flicking his cigarette into the old coffee tin full of snow in the corner of the porch he had brought with him so as not to litter her lawn with refuse. Suddenly he seemed more animated.

"What I'm worried about is you catching cold. Get over here." He said taking off his coat and wrapping it around her shoulders. He stepped behind her and wrapped his arms around her upper shoulders, resting his chin on the crown of her head. Holding her like that he swayed gently side to side by turning his hips a little to the left then the right. It produced a sensation of being rocked like a child in the arms of a parent.  _'Father huh, Jim?'_  she thought amused with the concept of him raising a child. Her heart melted imaging him holding a baby up high smiling as he looked into the child's eyes. She stifles a little laugh when the baby in the image spits up onto the right side of his face & shirt and Jim's eyes go comically round.

"Everything is fine, you hear me?" He said. She wanted to believe he was trying to reassure her but some small despair lingered in his voice made her understand he needed her to reassure him.

"Yeah. Everything is fine." Chantoya repeated. She tilted her head back while arching her back a bit leaning against the railing. Jim looks down and closes the space between their lips, giving her an awkward upside down kiss. His right hand slides up her neck, his fingers slide around her chin then it moves downward caressing a line down her body that even through her long warm wool shawl & flannel dress she feels the pressure and warmth of. His hand tracks back upward and stops over her heart as he hugs her closer and releases her from the kiss.

When she opens her eyes she sees he has stopped moving she thinks because he heard a noise she hasn't heard.

"Shhh..." He breathes. He doesn't change how he's holding her or how he's standing.

She straitens her back and looks out at the yard as a pair of deer step out of the trees and onto the unblemished sparkling snow. They look up at her and Jim from the yard below for a while before walking forward towards the porch. They appear to both be female. In a quiet magical moment, the two humans watch as they gracefully move forward walking slowly and cautiously.

The two deer walk right up to the edge of the porch. One slightly braver than the other reaches it's neck forward. Chantoya suddenly filled with hope and wonder reaches forward over the railing. The deer nuzzles her hand and after a moment then lays it head in her hand the way a cat will do at times, almost making you pet them. Then the deer looks up again at Jim before it makes a curt snorting noise before leaving them to cut left walking around the side of the house, probably heading to the thicker bushes there, taking the shy deer with it.

It strikes Chantoya as an odd coincidence considering what she had been thinking about. Maybe in real life there were Black princesses. Maybe some do get rescued by an honorable knight. Maybe someday their prince does come. She normally would have told herself not to think such silly things but at the moment she didn't want to. She just wanted to believe even if for just a while.

Chantoya turns around in his arms and sees the huge smile on his face.

"Weren't they beautiful?" Jim asks with a lightened tone.

"Yeah, they were." She replies.

"Do they come here often?" He asks.

"No. I don't feed the animals around here so that was very unusual." She answers.

"Hm. Well, seems they like you whether you have food for them or not, like me."

"But you are eating dinner here..."

"Don't tell them. I want all your delicious cooking to myself!"

She puts her arms around his waist hugging close to him while listening to his heartbeat wondering if they can possibly save each other.


	5. Caleb

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As the street light turn on, one soul in Jansenhaven is quite troubled. Caleb, being young, naive and unexperienced fights to come to grips with the new rocky terms he is on with Jim.

He doesn't want to talk to anyone but the one who won't talk to him. Caleb both at once feels as if his heart is crumbling apart and being shut away in a cold dark box. He is outwardly numb, in public shy and quiet as a mouse. On the inside he's too far out of his depth to know what to do now. It wasn't supposed to be like this. Why did everything have to change? He doesn't understand what went wrong, what did do he do that makes Jim like this?

The radio on his bureau is on playing Close To You by The Carpenters. It is evening and the window is cracked a little to stop the wind howling through the old frame. The elm outside Caleb's room, home to a great big owl, is naked and dry looking in the light from the thin sliver of moonlight coming up. The light in his room is off. Caleb, wearing only his long-sleeved plum colored sweater stands just inside the locked door of his room facing his window. His eyes are puffy from crying, his red hair tousled and unbrushed, his lean limbs are ice cold from standing in the darkening gloom like this for so long.

It's hard to eat or sleep, he doesn't want to see his family or co-workers. He doesn't want anyone to see him because he doesn't want to explain why he can't do anything without slipping away into his head imagining Jim alone in his little house looking the way he did when Caleb tried to give him his gift. Looking like he was floating through the sea alone, lost & unable to find an island of solace. As he thinks this his mind comes back to the place he wishes it wouldn't. The day he'd gone out for allergy medicine, how he and Father Jim had made out. He had no idea what was going on in some ways, didn't know what he should be doing or what someone else would normally do. Jim had made him feel so many things he'd never felt before. He had came and it was so intense, such a different feeling than one has masturbating. A deep erotic pulse makes him gasp "Uhnph!" as he draws his hips back bending forward and covering his groin with his hands, pressing trying to cut the sensation off. But he can't, it's inside him already. His body remembers Jim's touch.

Or sometimes he imagines Jim is with someone like Jessie Wellspring, passionately gripping, squeezing, sucking, biting, scratching her naked body, using his dick to fill her up with sensations Caleb can only imagine. In his mind's eye, he sees Jim's silver hand sliding up her bare arm, the way he did with Caleb. He imagines Jim pulling her hair the way he did with Caleb. He imagines Father Jim between her legs thrusting in a slow hypnotic manner the way he did with Caleb. These images make him more lonesome than jealous. He would love to watch Jim make it with someone else, God, it would be a fantastic learning opportunity. Something inside him would like the slow-burning torture of watching Jim do those kinds of things, a voyeuristic prisoner forced to watch and imagine what every little touch must feel like.

At the moment, he is imagining pale soft flesh, deep red lines stretch down its length, tiny dots of red appearing on the marks looking like the welts his brother Jacob got falling out of the tree in their front yard one summer's day when Caleb was 4. He recalled watching fascinated from around the edge of the kitchen doorway hugging his soft rabbit plushy and sucking his thumb as his mother cleaned and applied ointment to the wounds on his brother's ribs and legs. He saw blood in tiny dots seeping out of his brother's skin shining like tiny gemstones before their mother wiped them away with a cloth wet with cool water. After, as 8 yrs old Jay sat on the couch during the day instead of being able to go out and play, Caleb had asked him "What does it feel like?"

Due to Caleb's tactile disorder, many sensations are a mixture of reactions, causing Caleb to lack understanding of how other's feel sensation. Pain, in particular, is often peculiar to him because it causes some pleasantness that he can not identify, which becomes confusing when he sees another person injured.

Jay, annoyed with his younger brother's repetition on the matter would say, "It hurts, dumbo."

To which Caleb would say, "But what kind of hurt?" from around his thumb.

"I don't know. It just hurts." Jay would answer again.

"But how does it hurt?" questioned Caleb his 'r' sounding more like a 'y' sound.

"Like when you fall off your bike or playing baseball when you fall on the dirt." Jay would say feeling uncomfortable because his brother could do neither of those things without extreme discomfort because of the small amount of touching others they require, but not sure how to explain any further.

Still not understanding Caleb would say "Oh. Does everything hurt or just the marks? Does it feel hot? Does it feel cold? Does it make your tummy feel funny? Does it feel like things are moving where it-" growing a bit excited and removing his finger from his mouth to speak more clearly.

"Cay, let your brother rest, honey. Why don't you read a book together?" Their mother would say when she discovered Caleb asking once more about it. Noticing her son's preoccupation with pain & injuries she tried to gently lead him away from his growing obsession to something that may make Jay feel better as well.

Caleb asked these questions every day until Jay started taking a book and going to the empty schoolyard to read under the trees without his brother's weird questions every five seconds.

Caleb thought now maybe he wanted to feel what it felt like, he'd like to feel anything but what he felt right now. Yes, he would rather Jim hurt his body and make him bleed beautiful red pearls instead of hurting his feelings by not touching him at all. He thought he would let Father Jim do that if he wanted to and Caleb would make it feel good, good like Jim making him cum had felt. He could do that sometimes. If something felt really bad he could imagine other things and the bad feelings would go away or turn good. When people touch him unwantedly he hates it so much that he can make like it's something good, instead of the horrible crawling buzzing itching digging and whatever else feeling, a sensation he still has yet to understand what he is even feeling.

It was why in the 8th grade Kevin had stopped bullying him. One time he took it too far and in response, Caleb had done something he'd never done before. Kevin had shoved Caleb knocking him down then had sat on his chest holding his arms down so his friend Brent could hit Caleb on the face. But as Caleb laid there with the weight on top of him, his skin stinging and crawling, having also disturbingly high erogenous reactions, everything changed. He felt the slaps to his cheeks but it was different from his usual symptoms. He liked it now. Caleb smiled a slow large grin staring into his classmate's eyes, a thing he rarely did to anyone. Brent had said "Oh yeah, think it's funny?" and started hitting Caleb even harder. His lip broke and started to bleed but his only response had been a short "Ha!" as if something surprising yet fun had happened. "Stupid dork! You don't even know how to get beat up right!" Kevin had said frustrated releasing Caleb. "Come on Brent, before somebody comes..." he had said leaving Caleb battered on the boy's room floor.

He had tried it and almost did it on purpose a few minutes ago. He had been thinking about Jim biting him on the inside of his thighs. So hard it left marks until his skin burst open like the skin of a grape and blood came out. There was an image of Jim licking it and smearing it up and down Caleb's thigh. The awful lonely emotions in his heart changed into something else and the version of him inside the imagined scenario was moaning and laughing while the real version of him felt stirrings of desire tinkling off his nerves like the chiming of many small bells. Then a noise downstairs broke the illusion and he was fully aware again. He was alone and something inside felt terrible and he didn't know how to make it stop. He felt like a terrible person for fantasizing about something so nasty. He didn't know these emotions could hurt so bad.

He wants to talk about it, he wishes he had friends besides Jim. He would ask them "What does it mean when someone touches you gently in all the private places you need them to till you get your release, but later can't look at you and doesn't have time to talk on the phone, or when you see them in the parking lot of the grocery? What does it mean if someone shows you their tears, their dreams, their soft humble heart, but then doesn't want you to worry about them or wonder about them anymore? What does it mean if they take you to a whole new realm of yourself and then won't go there with you again? What did Jim mean when he said 'Everything is fine. I just don't want to drag you down too.'?" He wonders if he is close enough friends with Tabbie from work or Chantoya the lady who alters his sweaters? He thinks she might know about guys and about him liking guys, maybe on his next visit to the shop he can start a chat with her and...

_'God, I'm fooling nobody here. It would take three times the amount of guts to try and start a friendship meaningful enough to talk about my sex life in as it had for me to go to Jim the first time.'_

There is a sharp knock on his door and through it, his mother calls "Cay, dinner is here! Do you want to wash up first or--"

"Just leave it, Mom!" He replies forcing his voice as close to a normal tone as he can. Flashes of memory, sensation, and feeling still swirling in his head.

"Ok, if you need anything, baby..."

"Ugh, I'm sick, not 5, Mom. I'll get it in a minute." Caleb says losing patience which he normally has an unending supply of.

"Don't you get snippy with me, mister!" Calls his mother.

Sighing, Caleb apologizes. "I'm sorry, Mom. I don't mean to be grumpy. I just still feel pretty bad and need some more rest."

"I'm sorry too, honey. You never take off from work, so I'm worried. I can't help it. When you're fifty you'll still be my baby, Cay. I don't want you struggling with your family right here."

"It's ok, you've got nothing to be sorry for, Mom. I was being rude and now I fully regret it. And I know, if I need help, I'll ask."

"All right, then. Apology accepted. Now eat some food, Cay."

"Ok. In a minute."

Henrietta Morrison's feet shift on the floorboards in the hall as she turns around and heads back down the hall then down the stairs.

Caleb unlocks the door and reaches out for the dinner tray on the small table beside his bedroom door. Turning around again he nudges the door shut with his foot. He sets his dinner down on the nightstand and returns to the door locking it once again.

Earlier this winter he finally reached his nest egg goal and started looking for an apartment, which he found. It was perfect, just big enough he thought to entertain rare guests, house his books and succulent collection, allowing him to live on his own. There was a skylight in the bedroom that he wanted to lie under with Jim looking at the stars and lots of storage for all his clothes. He had been so excited to tell Jim, he wanted Jim to be the first person to visit. But when he told him, Father Jim seemed distracted at first then to Caleb's growing sadness, actively disinterested. He was so shocked by the change in Jim he wondered if this happens when a girl sleeps with an older guy as well. Does the man seem sensitive and kind before the (if you could even call it) sex then cold and impatient after?

_'I was fully prepared for him to not be automatically in love with me, or to ever really love me but not this. He's the only one I've ever wanted closer. The only one who can touch me like that. All those people who touch me when I don't want them to, as strong as I wish to repel them is how much I want to attract him. Did I do something to make him mad? Why doesn't he...?'_

Caleb remembers Jim's hungry eyes the last time they did it. He had thought Jim came when he did like people do in romance novels, but Caleb somehow knew from his eyes that he hadn't finished. Caleb, not out of a sense that he must give of himself to satisfy another, just the sense of wanting to give Jim anything he could, he had done what he usually does to get himself off. It was not that he had to finish Jim because Jim had done it to Caleb but to see Jim's eyes unclouded by hurt anymore, to see them tranquil and open like the sky. Caleb remembers the warm tingle throughout his chest as he watched Jim cum. "Maybe I'm not enough after all..." he whispers out loud into the dark.

He walks over to his bed and sits. He opens the drawer in the nightstand and takes out three pill bottles. He takes out one of each and drinks them down with the glass of 7up pop his mother left. He lays back on his bed afterward trying to decide if he can somehow turn off his loneliness. Having tried for most of his life he knows he can only change it into something else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! Thanks so much for being here!


	6. Shane

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shane contemplates how he came to be at the point of his life he is living through with Jim. His past holds more secrets than Jim will ever know. More than Shane will ever say.

_'So so cold.'_

_'So cold.'_

_'Mother, I'm scared.'_

My body was so strong. All of it is too perfect. So resilient, so healthy. God, I didn't think before I did this to myself.

I've been down here freezing to death for...has it been two weeks? Three? I stopped counting when it looked like it was closing in on being close to half a month. It was horrifying realizing it would take me longer to die of exposure than any other poor unfortunate soul in human history.

Sometimes I'd almost open the hatch and flood the place, maybe I'd drown or maybe water pressure would crush me like a grape. Or I'd survive the depth and pressure but end up brain dead due to lack of oxygen as I tried to make it to the surface.

Johan was expecting to conquer where ever he flew fuckin' this thing, hop out and have brunch. So there is no food, no water. But my body just keeps going, I'm starving, I'm dying of thirst and the serum doesn't seem to know it.

 _'Cold. Mother, it's so cold. It hurts. The cold... it hurts.'_  I run hot like an engine now so I may not die of hypothermia or go into shock but my nerves and sense of temperature are very accurate so cold at these lows feels terrible. My limbs ache constantly, the pain is nearly unbearable. The water around me is literally colder than ice. It's high sodium keeps it from freezing. And somehow at the core of me is still has heat.

I wanted it to be fast. I thought it would explode or breach hull on impact and I would drown quickly down here. I thought Captain America would be over and I could return to him. I wanted to exit this body then fly straight into his warm embrace, I know he is waiting for me somewhere which makes it worse.  _' I'm coming, my love. Soon I will be done, dear heart.'_ The only reason I don't kill myself is I don't want there to be even the slimmest of chances he's gone to Heaven and I having committed a mortal sin, would go to Hell, never to see him again. No, I must die naturally from circumstances I can not prevent if there is even a small hope that he is waiting. The only other way I'd rest easy is if I have no choice because there is nothing after this. If he has ceased to exist entirely, then it will be easy for me to as well.

The longer I'm alive the longer I have to live with the fact that I'm scared to die. The longer I'm alive the longer I have to live with the fact that I can't be with him. I'm not ready to die. I don't want to die. I don't want to die  _this_  way. But I don't want to be without him either. I don't want to be here if he isn't here. I don't want to live to never see him again. I could never love someone else like I love him. And they couldn't ever love me like he did.

_'Jesus, Buck. I'm so scared. I don't want to die, I don't want to go on without you-'_

_'Stop it,'_  I advise myself.  _'It's not fair to him and you know it. He doesn't know what happened to Steve and you aren't Steve.'_  Which is entirely true in a way that Jim can not ever know.

I am not Steve Rogers. I am the hollowed out existence of a demon into which the soul of one once known as Steven Grant Rogers has been poured. It is only because of Mistress Death's hate & distain for Thanos, I have come into being. When He destroys things, she salvages other things. On this side of the coin, people don't always stay dead and demons aren't always pure evil. So she saw a way to mock and undo what he has done by allowing us to continue existing. I'm sure there are many people who have come here before us. Being an incubus, I am Bucky's most ideal idea of Steve, which was pretty accurate to the reality of the man I was because he is such an honest soul. I differ with only a few changed traits caused by my own free will from having been once a human. I am also something which has been alive since light first traveled far enough to reflect off the moon and touch upon the earth. I understand things a human should not, I remember things a demon should not and I feel things neither should.

As I was dying I heard a voice, one not many have heard. "Do you know love?"

The fear and physical symptoms of death did not halt as I said "Yes, please let us be together."

"Do you know love?" it asked again.

"Yes. His name is... Barnes, Bucky Barnes, James 'Bucky' Buchanan Barnes."

"Do you know love?" it asked once more and I suddenly understood what was being asked.

"Yes. I can't die for my country or the world. I'm just one man. I can't save everyone. But I can die for him. I can die for love. I can save our love for him."

I felt my heart stop and my brain flood with dimethyltryptamine. I perceived every moment of my death as my mind's tethers to my live body loosened and I slipped up into a stream of cold bright stars. Their cool light released the heat of hot flowing blood that had been constantly surrounding my mind since birth. It felt like breathing for the first time. I traveled for a time and saw creatures and beings I understood to be living in a separate plane of perception from humanity among other beings. Some were curious oddities, some were beautiful. Then I was before her.

"He destroys life in other realms. Many of these should not end as of yet, they have not played out their roles to completion. His narcissistic desires are destroying what is good and right. I will never approve of what he sees as his rightful power. He is a petulant child. Mad and oblivious in equal measure." She proclaimed. "I am Death itself. He takes of me as if I were his personal candy dish. He unbalances the universe to the point of absolute destruction." Lady Death pointed a finger out to the right. " But he can not go there. Soon I shall close the entrance to this place barring Thanos for eternity. I save those I find willing and able to transition from universe to universe to fill that place with everything he is not. I have chosen you now for actual love which Thanos cannot truly feel. Do you truly die to be reunited with your lost love?"

"Where is he, when can I go to him?" I ask. Being pure mind and energy I speak in intensities of brightness and opaqueness.

"Yes. But you will not be as you were. To be in this place at this time, you must become unhuman. You must also eventually become...un-Steven Rogers." Says The Lady.

"Anything as long as I can love him again. I beg of you, don't take him away from me nor I from him."

"Then I gift you with the key to life here. Do not waste any of it."

There is a huge storm of power around me and suddenly I am contained by a body of sorts once more. I now have a memory that reaches back far in time and know things about the human body, mind, and spirit a mortal could never learn, not in 2000 lifetimes. I understand now the super soldier serum had changed and amplified every aspect of me including how death would affect me. If I had died before the serum, I wouldn't be re-entering the world of the living. I wouldn't have heard her call. Much of my memory of my past life begins to fade a little bit but everything related to him, my all, my love, my raison d'être, stays pure and clear.

My mistress I understand is a sacred & holy concept, she will never lie nor take away what she gives, never deceive, never act with malicious intent. In the new world, many agents are governed under her ruling principles to ensure death for every living thing. I agree to answer only to her call from this day forth and am able to understand even the God of life on this world can not cut my ties to her, nor rise against her power. I pledge to my Goddess, ever grateful to her wise and fair heart.

"Listen, I am really in no shape to go out tonight." Jim is saying into the telephone.

"Then I'll come-" I try. My dissatisfaction rises in my chest. With all of my power, I am still impotent, still helpless.

"- don't really want company either. I'm just gonna take a bath and call it a night, ya know?" He is beginning to sound irritated. I know it is more because he is frustrated with himself.

"Yeah. Ok then." I want to say 'Call if you need me.' but I know what he will really need and I don't want to have that conversation again so soon.

"Later then." Jim sounds relieved but underneath it sounds melancholy.

"Yeah, ok, bye." I hang up and stare at the phone. I am now quite frustrated with the inability to fix what is wrong.

When I came here I knew how strong the hunger was going to be and I knew I'd have the strength to fight it, but Jesus, even without this going on, I sometimes claw my eyes out just to distract me from it. I can heal them as much as I need to, still, if I were human this amount of possessive obsession would be unacceptable behavior.

But I'm not a human. I am a demonic entity and sometimes I do demonic things, inhuman things. It is hard to be so close yet so far away. I. Want. Him. I want his soul sooo badly. I am so very hungry that it would have driven my human mind mad long ago but I am a bit shielded now by redirecting the daunting power of the hunger to fuel my magic.

God, I hope he never sees me like this. I lay on the floor beside Sandy the tan wood end table. Being a spirit being has some amazing benefits. I cut my emotional output by 78% and focus on organizing my thoughts and strategies for being what he needs me to be right now. I project waves of sexual energy to him. With it around his mind, he might find a way to get what he needs. He doesn't want me watching over him through the mirror or visiting through a portal as my spirit form. This is the most I can do at a distance.

Dream lover, a fantasy with no end. Perfect in my power, real in all the best ways & fictional in all the necessary ones. I am always pruning out the parts of Steve that stick out to much. I am a dream; much of my behavior and attitudes are governed by what Jim knows of Steve, even the stuff he can't remember, the truths he can't remember. If I ignore this step of being alive I can become more problems for him than he'll ever be able to handle.

Say I start letting those memories of the cold black depths motivate what I do now. In no time I will get too comfortable and forget to fight the sinister urge in me. I would place this desire mistakenly under the belief of being love. These instincts urge me to drag him to the brink of life and death, to give him every and anything his heart has ever desired for good or ill and to then consume his content, full, absolutely dripping with love soul.

It will taste like nothing has, nor as any other tongue I have ever used has ever tasted. From what I understand of my last meal, it will taste of the heart of life, love & hope itself, the font of all power. And it being the soul of one I myself dearly love... my body is racked by tremors laced with intoxicating pleasure as I try to comprehend it's flavor.

The demon I am has never loved and thus has never eaten such a thing. I fight to remain in control because I am so very hungry. But I can not let it win. Because real love is a sacrifice. If I want him to live, if I want him to love, to be happy, to be safe, to be home, I must do anything & everything for him, I can never let the demon within win. I can never let it out.

_'My sunrise on an everlasting dawn, my life's treasure, my heart's song, my source of all true love...'_

"I would die for you." I whisper in several voices to the dark in my apartment. The only light is the baleful fuchsia glow of my gaze.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please support Jim, Chantoya, Caleb & Shane by commenting and leaving some kudos!


	7. Jim III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tired and looking for solace, Jim tries to take some personal time. But unrest and uncertainty await.

The memory of silk is on his tongue, it's textile weave crisp and smooth. Sucking his own saliva back out of the fabric as he tries to suck the nipple beneath. It tasted a little of laundry soap and perfume. Jim can almost feel it under his hands. The swell of one buttock curving under his palm as the fabric is sliding against the skin underneath. His eyes are heavily lidded and unfocused. His left hand slips further down into the hot water. Steam rises from the surface of the water as drops from the faucet to quietly drip into the tub. He doesn't see the room, himself or the water. Whatever of his skin that isn't underwater has a sheen of condensation from the steam being trapped by the small hairs on his body. His mostly muscular frame is well lit with highlights from the light of the window across the hall. He has lost himself, "Thank Christ for small wonders." he'd say, in a fantasy that is just deep and strong enough for him to hold onto. His hand works slowly so as not to splash and make too much distracting noise or mess on the floor. With his legs spread wide, his left leg bent at the knee with his foot actually out of the water hanging over the edge of the tub, he is massaging the area under his testicles with his fingertips as he squeezes his thumb around the base of his cock on its top side. He is stroking himself off by delivering most of the attention to what is called the invisible portion of a penis.

The muscle tissue of a penis extends from its tip downward to the space the scrotum begins at and then further down towards the back of the body usually for four to six more inches before terminating at the perineum. This part of the male body is often overlooked seeing as most people believe the real pleasure happens only around the tip. This is not so. An effective massage in this and a few other areas can elicit much more pleasure than most know. Jim presses his fingers into the corpus spongiosum along the underside of his penis, pressing deep, pulling first up towards his face then down again. He gasps with his mouth open and exhales in a rush. The pressure he exerts lets the water slip between his hard metal fingers and the soft stretchy skin just enough. He slips his other hand into the water and gently but firmly strokes the more readily visible portion of his big hard cock. He rests his head back on the rim of the old claw foot bathtub. His wet hair cushions his neck from touching to cold ceramic, a lock of it sticks to his right cheek curling up into his peripheral vision. His cheeks are flushed with the heat and arousal, his pupils completely blown.

It's coming soon, the hot strong energy builds and builds, pooling at the base of his dick, bringing him closer to the edge of release. He wants to cum soon but he can't rush it, anything could take him out of the little bit of focus he has somehow scrounged up to do this. His wet leg and foot are growing cold but still, his toes are trying to curl towards the ball of his foot. He struggles not to do it knowing it will be better if he is as relaxed as possible. He takes a deep breath and holds it. Jim actually wants to moan and moan loud, but it's better this way. The deafening insidious quiet where his memory of the past should be is drowned out by his own voice in his head screaming lustful exclamations and nothing more. There are no words just his own voice. If he uttered aloud the sound his mind is cloaked in it would sound as if someone were sawing off his leg and he was enjoying it immensely. So in his voice stays so no one may hear and assume he has fallen down the stairs and broken his back. He expels the breath and pants for a while feeling quite light headed. His body is tingling from head to toe, his eyes are now squeezed shut, his pulse is pounding away at his temple.

Almost. Almost there, almost, just a bit....

There is a sound that has been getting louder for some time now which is stealing away his attention. He struggles to not listen but his mind is slipping off the task at hand, at both hands, slowly but surely. He doesn't want to stop, he doesn't want to hear. But he does. Father Jim does. The moment of orgasm slips away through his fingers like so much water and he doesn't even fight to keep going. He lets his hands slide off from their positions. He groans in frustration. As he puts his leg back into the hot water which is quickly cooling, his mind tries to start down the road of figuring out what the noise is. Disappointed, he slides his butt down and allows for his back to slide down to the bottom of the bathtub. As he does he takes a breath and closes his eyes before dunking his head down. The water settles around him, warmth snuggled in close going into his ear canals, navel and into his open mouth. His mind latches onto the sound like a puppy playing tug o' war with it's favorite toy.

It's a bit rhythmic, the sound. At first he thought it was an alarm, then a cat or dog whining some distance away, it goes on a bit longer and he begins to think someone is yelling outside. He is dismayed to discover it's actually the sound of a child crying hysterically. Jim feels very uncomfortable about having been doing what he had been doing so intently with those cries going on in the background of other sounds external and internal. He is further disturbed by the volume and intensity the child is crying with. He opens his eyes underwater and for a moment he sees a flash of movement, shadow pass overhead above the surface of the water. He quickly slides backward and up out of the water which is rapidly growing colder. When his ears breach the surface he is quite shocked to hear the crying louder than ever, as if it is in his house and not outside at all.

Jim stands up and steps out of the tub. He grabs his towel flinging it about his waist before stepping out in to the hall. Yes, impossibly the sound is originating inside the house. Downstairs in fact. His mind tries to settle on the idea that it's a cat, just a loud cat, maybe at the back door yowling to be let in. Jim pushes his wet hair out of his eyes up and back from his forehead as he turns left then walks slowly toward the stairs. He starts down taking one step then the next listening to the cries. It's all screams and no words in a very different way his own had been a short while ago. From the sound of it this child needed to be found and helped now. Something terrible was happening. They were either in pain or in danger of it. By the time he reached the front entrance way at the foot of the stairs the voice was at the least five times louder and seemed to be coming from the back of the house in the kitchen. He walked through the parlor hearing the voice grow louder and louder by the step and by the time he arrived in the kitchen standing on the ice frosted cold tiles breathing out puffs of steam he understood himself to be hearing a disembodied voice.

The voice yet again seemed to double in volume and as a response without knowing he was doing it, he raised both palms and placed them on his ears. The cries continued just as loud as it would have been had he not done it in a normal situation. And still the cries persisted growing louder still. A feeling of deep hopelessness and terror began to flood his mind. It felt as if all of the good in the world had died. Soon he was on his knees in the kitchen bent over with his forehead resting against the tiles crying himself as the sound of the child permeated every space of the room. It seemed to come from everywhere at once, in his bones and teeth he could feel a buzzing vibration as if he were a speaker plugged directly into a microphone the child was screaming into. He was nauseous and disoriented. He lost the ability to sense time and began to feel it had been going on for hours. The sound then stopped abruptly leaving Jim screaming "STOP IT STOP IT STOP **STOP STOP STOP**!!!" at the top of his lungs. He understood now he had been on the floor screaming for close to twenty minutes and had screamed himself hoarse.

Panting, trying to regain some control, he fought the urge to pound his own head with his fists till he either lost consciousness or felt like he wasn't losing his mind anymore. He did not see the raccoon on the kitchen window sill that had been scratching the glass for the last five minutes. Nor the spider on the light fixture watching him closely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for all your support!


	8. The Asset

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A nightmare. A memory. A single act of violence. The horror will never end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok usually I apologize at some point aaand this is a point I apologize for this one, I'm sorry.

His heart is pounding in his ears. The outline of his vision is hazy. There is chaos everywhere. Things are burning, there is silence after the crashed train comes to a stop. His breathing is fast and he can feel it on his face. The muzzle. The mask. They cover his face so they don't have to see him as a human anymore. He is a tool and he must work properly so he needs to forget that he almost just died and finish his mission.

Screaming, everyone is screaming, the targets are screaming. No witnesses, they must be silenced. His arm drops quickly and the skull of the man whose head he has just crushed falls off, pieces of skull and brain matter flicked away like water droplets to the ground making ugly splattering noises. The screaming becomes louder, more horrified. He had been holding the man at waist height, he now drops the man's body to the ground. He starts forward to the man protecting the small person. The Asset's foot lashes out kicking him off of the tiny human. The man is sent flying through the air and the small one shrieks louder in terror. He walks quickly to the man and kicks him again onto his stomach. He plants a foot on the side of the man's throat. Pulling out his Glock he puts two in the back of the man's head and they exit his right eye. He then returns to the last person.

No more than four or five years old, she kneels in the blood stained snow screaming her heart out. Her blonde braid has come undone and her corduroy jacket is in tatters from the initial attack on the train. He lifts his gun toward her and eternity begins.

Her red face is dirty and tear streaked. Her eyes are squeezed closed now and still a deluge of sorrow cuts a course down her face. Her arms are still raised from squeezing the man who protected her close. She is so small. She is the smallest thing he has ever seen. His mind doesn't understand at the moment that she is a baby that grew a little and is taller but pretty much is still just a little baby. He doesn't know how such a tiny person has lived this up until this point. He doesn't know how the world hasn't grinded them under it's heel leaving nothing but a bright stain where life used to be.

He won't let himself entertain the question of why she is here, because she wasn't supposed to be here. His intel was wrong and now he has to, he must. They will hurt him very bad and make him do things that will make him wish he had killed a dozen tiny humans to avoid punishment if he doesn't do what comes next. Even if he doesn't want to, the disobedience trigger will unlock and then his hands will do it anyway. Her tiny face is contoured by fear and pain. She begins choking loudly on her breath and sobs. She sounds like she is dying. Because she is. And he is going to-

And the cold cuts deeper than ever before.

It swirls around inside him as if he is an empty chasm. Everything it touches hurts.

He wishes he could cry for her, for himself, for the whole sick fucking world.

The mask of the Asset's expressionless face masks the agony on his own real face.


	9. Jim & Shane II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Even with Shane's help, this time love can not heal all wounds. Jim is hitting rock bottom and soon he will find out how low the fall will go.

The shock and horror of the dream are so strong he pants, jerking himself out of the visions into a different dream entirely, his eyes darting back and forth then finally he sees Shane there. What he saw in his nightmare is gone, he doesn't remember his dream, just his feelings.  _'God damn these wounds inside me!'_ He screams into the dark of his mind.

"GAAAAAUUUUGGHR!!!" he shrieks ripping the mask from his face throwing it away. Somehow one thing followed him out of the dark this time. It's his old tactical uniform complete with holsters and leather glove to improve grip for his metal hand. Every second of pain he has endured can be heard in his screams multiple tones and pitches. It's made of the wail of a mother who has watched her children die, the cry of a child lost in the rubble of a bombing attack, the scream of a man having his nerve endings fileted, the animalistic growl of a person with nothing left but their teeth to defend themselves. The mask flies through the atmosphere and disappears among Shane's pink misty space.

Turning on Shane, Jim's features are livid. "Just do it!!" He screams. "I told you I need it! I can't stop the dreams and I need it to sleep! I'm going insane and I need to sleep to get away from it!!!"

"Alright, alright...just calm down Jim. Uh, lay here." Shane gestures.

Jim bends his left knee lowering himself to the ground then puts out his left hand behind him on the floor while stretching out his other leg. He finally comes to a lying position and puts his right hand, the back of it facing him, up over his face. A single wretched sob escapes his lips. His features are torn by anguish for a moment then his face goes slack as he begins trying to push what he feels away even as tears run down the sides of it. He tells himself if he doesn't cry it's not that bad. "Hurry up, hurry!" he says in a voice broken by all the forms of pain he is suffering from.

Shane, with a look of worry, puts his hand over Jim's black tactical pants over his pelvis and begins. Focusing his energy and spreading it through all of Jim's body carefully cushioning his sensory perception.  _'This is not Jim. This is not my Jim. He wouldn't treat me like an object like this. This is worse than realizing I am as unique as the 1,000,000 can opener produced in a cheap factory upon my awakening. At least I was doing what I was made for before then and could take some pride in my captures.'_  But he does as he's been asked because he doesn't want Jim to make him go away and he doesn't know how else to help.  _'God, look what they've done to you. My poor darling, how I wish I could erase your pain entirely.'_

"Seven." Father Jim says in a hoarse raw voice.

"Jim, that's more than I think is-" Shane begins concerned by how much Jim's mind can really take. It can take a lot more but Shane doesn't ever want to test how much exactly.

"And do it like last time," Jim demands.

"Yes, but I won't give you any more than that, Buck."

"Don't... don't fucking call me that..." He whined disgracefully as a retort.

"Sorry, Jim... ready?"

"Yeah, what are you waiting for?"

Shane applies his energy to Jim's nerves through them caressing his soul drawing out the muscle memories of every sexual response Jim has ever had. One. Christmas is two weeks away and as the town gets more festive this Jim gets more...well, he's not angry at anyone, but there is rage, so much rage. It's a product born of unresolved injustice and justified hate he wishes to direct at the people who destroyed his life. And the despair he feels is so deep to him it feels there will never be an end to it, he doesn't want to die so much as just to end. Somehow though in public he is mostly alert & clever his judgment still has become clouded by what he's running from. So Jim likes it very particular these days. And if Shane doesn't do it how he likes it, he gets very upset and Shane doesn't want Jim to be angry, he doesn't know if Jim will hurt himself or someone else in that state.

Two. It has to be slow, so he can feel it as long a possible. They have to have a very specific amount of time between so Jim can feel the thoughts & feelings going away. Three. He's trying to go somewhere, a place where he doesn't need to know what happened to him. Four. It was fun at first, coming over to make love before bed so Jim could sleep better. Five. But as time has gone on, he got more impatient and wanted to get to this part as fast as possible. Six. They do it here now and like this so he can feel as much as he can without harming himself, more than his body can handle. Seven. Shane knows Jim is hurting and if it weren't for the pain, it wouldn't be this way.

Shane wishes he were a little more who Steve used to be because Steve wouldn't let Bucky do this to himself.  _'Jim,'_  Shane reminds himself.  _'He's Jim now and sometimes Jim is not Bucky.'_

                                                                          ~~~

Jim waits for the first one.  _'There, oh it feels so goddamn good. So fucking -Uuhhn huuuhn...!'_  Every inch of him cleansed of the horror he was just going through. The actual memory broke apart as he was in the dream so it was just the insidious residue it left behind, the stain on his soul he was trying to wash his hands of. It's so fast, the relief is immediate. If there were a medicine or drink that could do this he'd be fine. Just a little now and then to help him get through the pain.

The second in the series feels good too, but what he really wanted is starting to happen. His mind is shifting its focus away from those old bad things to these new good things. No more pain, more bitterness, no more loneliness, no more feeling the sensation of having ended someone else's life.

Three and he is able to separate himself out from the past again. This is Jim feeling good, not the Asset feeling bad. Yes, it's Jim feeling like there can never be any wrong or pain or any other bad thing ever again. This is Jim untethered from the past. Yes, it's Jim finally free.

Four and with this he doesn't need to ever feel that bad thing again, he can come here and be free of the thing he was then, free of the torture of it all. Just leave the world behind, leave the past, leave everything behind, leave Steve behind. He doesn't even remember him, Steve left him to those monsters, so now he can just leave Steve behind. Something malicious in his mind raves madly unheard at him before being silenced in the tremendous energy,  _'You left him first! If you hadn't left his side none of this would have happened! It's your fault!!'_

The fifth takes his words, sight, hearing & sense of touch away. He loves going where he can't think straight enough to feel the hurt. His body is full of the saturating power of the orgasms. He knows nothing but sexual elation. His hard penis is full to the brim with ecstasy, it throbs in his loins like a deep cavity in an infected gumline.

Jim is on the floor rolling around and lashing out like someone has thrown acid on him. It feels so pleasurable he can't lie still. "UUUUGHH!!!! HAAAHN! AH AAH AAAAAH!!!" He cries out. His screaming toes the line between screams of agony and cheers of joy.

The sixth leaves him all but paralyzed, panting in fast big breaths. In his bed his body is stuck in position with his back arched, knees bent up a bit and both hands pressed to the sides of his head like he has a headache. He feels nothing but the orgasm, his mind is locked on the sensation. When the seventh finishes the sequence, he feels nothing. Absolutely nothing. He doesn't exist in his own mind anymore. There is nothing. He is nothing. The orgasm blocks everything from being anything.

This is what he really wanted. It's such an easy fix. Why kill yourself if you can just stop existing? If he gave Shane his soul would it be like this, bliss as deep as the universe then nothing? For a while, his empty mind floats, completely unconnected to anything even associated with reality. Then it starts to fade. He slowly starts to become aware of what he has done. In this moment he feels fear because his fully conscious mind comes back from it's empty state disconnected from his entire body and each time he worries if it's permanent this time. He worries he has died or perhaps he'll be trapped outside of his sense of pleasure and Shane won't be able to even make him feel better, he'll have nothing but the nightmare of his past until the day he dies. Then he starts to hear and see again and even with that scare at the end he thinks he could kill to feel that way again.

Then he registers what he sees. And the first of the bad feelings, guilt, comes back. It's Shane staring down at him with a look of such utter disappointment and pity. Jim actually hates him for it for a second. Jim could slap him hard enough to make his nose bleed, in fact, might not even feel bad about it because Shane isn't even real like everyone else, he has said so before, he can heal and duplicate his body as much as he wants, so it wouldn't be that bad and then Shane would know how much he is fucking pissing Jim off.

_'I've been through hell and back! How dare you, Shane! How dare you try to judge me for doing what I must to get through the mental wreckage left behind. You don't fucking know what it's like! It's not like I want to be so broken and fucked up I'll do anything to escape it even for a few minutes!'_

He sits up on his left elbow and pushes Shane back and away from himself. He sits up more and turns away from the concerned incubus. Jim draws his knees up hugging them. "You can go home now," he says tonelessly.

"But-" Shane begins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys, thanks for reading!


	10. Jim IV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As reality itself begins to fall apart Jim makes a horrifying discovery about himself.

"Get OUT!" Jim bellows waking in his bed sitting upright because he actually yelled in his sleep. Shane is nowhere to be seen and has probably left already. Jim lays back down and instantly feels horrible. Horrible for how he's using Shane, horrible about the length he's going to so he can get away from the thing eating him alive, horrible about how alone he feels. He would go to her and asked to be punished and allowed to love and made good again but he doesn't want to expose Chanty to the toxic mire in his head. He would go to Caleb and let him teach Jim how to love himself, how to accept himself, how to let go of old pain but his young naive partner doesn't need any of the kind of trouble Father Jim is. And now, the last person he was talking to about it he's just pushed them away because he losing control.

Then like a light being turned on Jim realized his room was freezing. There was no sound to the point that it felt the air itself was too full to carry them. It was cloying to the ear the way a bitter taste can be in the mouth. He wanted to believe the radiator had quit but the feeling in his stomach wouldn't let him. Anxiety and fear squirmed around in his chest like a trapped eel. He felt unmistakably watched again as he lied in his bed. Then something touched his head on the left side of his brow and his eyes sprang open.

Directly in front of his face was the face of the blue girl. She hung horizontally in the air above his bed about a foot away from his own body on the beds surface. A jittery breath rattled out of his chest and a plume of steam misted forth from his face. Paralyzed with fright he watched a drop of half frozen congealed blood leak from one of the circles on her head. It dripped slowly clinging to the edge of the hole for that was what it really was, but he was helpless to move away as it finally surcame to gravity and dripped down landing on his own head. It landed with a lot of force as if the droplet weighed as much as a cinderblock. It was so cold it burned his flesh and even as he gasped to scream a second drop of blood dripped from the second hole and did the same.

As his shriek tore the night, she opened her mouth in a silent scream as well before exploding into a puff of what seemed to be dry cold snowflakes which landed all over him and his bed. It's touch filled him with revulsion for a reason he did not understand. It felt like leagues of silverfish were crawling all over him. He flung himself forth like an ambushed cat, landing ten feet away in the hallway outside his bedroom door in a crouched three point landing with his toe and right fingertips only touching the floor.

After a few silent moments, Jim again noticed a temperature change. The hallway was bordering on hot enough for one to sweat. He rose and stumbled backward into the bathroom flicking the switch on the wall then shutting and locking the door. He stood for a few more moments waiting to see if anything happened. His heart raced in his chest, panic running unchecked. He began to try a breathing exercise meant to calm one as the adrenaline in their system petered out but then a horrible burning on the left side of his head blazed.

He placed the heel of his palm there crying out in pain and turned to the mirror trying to see what was there. Moving his hand he saw two dark bruised looking circles above his eyebrow. The pain flared and he felt a sense of depth to the pain as if someone had stuck a red hot steel skewer into his head. He could draw an image of the path the pain took, from his forehead to just behind his ear and inward as if the invisible skewer meant to exit the right side of his head on a diagonal.

An image of the blue girl's face flashed before him in the mirror for a second, reversed as if she were looking in the mirror so the circles on their foreheads aligned, scaring him to death for the second time that night. He jumped back tripping a little and understood. The two small neat circles on her brow were bullet holes and the pain he felt was the trajectory those bullets took.

He retched and turned around throwing himself to the floor before the toilet. His stomach twisted painfully and he retched again dry heaving with so much force his muscles felt like he was having a Charley Horse throughout his entire abdomen. He moaned in misery. The pain of his back, head, and stomach coming together in an awful mixture of nearly unbearable sensation.

"No, no, no," he wept. "No, I ca- I can't remember! I - I would never, no God please! I didn't want to, I didn't know, I can't remember!!!"

Then, finally giving up & understanding the truth, "I killed her?!" He wailed. "I killed her! I killed her!! I killed... I killed-I killed her! God, why?! Why didn't you make me die??"


	11. Chantoya II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At the edge of the forest a large house on the top hill, this look peaceful & quiet. No one would assume the disturbances inside. Alone, Chantoya attempts to cope with the unexplainable.

Chantoya was lying in the bathtub trying to relax a little when the power quit again. The whole house made a noise then as if an invisible weight had settled on it making everything creak and groan. Pure silence issued for a few moments.

Then it began again. First at the as quiet as breath then soon becoming louder. A chorus of disembodied voices shredded the late afternoon gloom. They were so high and so low in pitch she didn't believe it could be the voice of anyone human. Alive anyway. Because she knew without a doubt, these were ghosts.

The voices wailed on and on and she covered her ears. She envisioned his face his smiling eyes as the voices beat down on her.

Some of the words could be heard sometimes. "DIRTY BITCH" "N***ER WHORE" "SHAMELESS SLUT" were a few of the tamer things she heard.

It had started after the accident. While Eddie had died on impact, she herself had lain in a coma for 5 weeks. When she had awoken, everything felt different even though nothing had changed. She had been incredibly confused for almost two months before things started to come into focus again. And was sent home soon after with a clean bill of health.

When she returned to the big quiet house things weren't always quiet. Sometimes loud voices shrieked in the middle of the night. Or she would feel a presence in the air so insistent she thought someone had broken into the house. Once while she slept she heard a voice say "Glad you've come back!" directly into her ear waking her. Her doctor said it must be residual effects from having been in a coma. He assured her she must be having waking nightmares.

Then last year the experiences seem to rachet up in intensity and frequency. Now this year, just after autumn real physically things had begun being affected and she had to consider other explanations after having to spend $500 real dollars on a real broken window pane.

She had heard stories growing up in Georgia. The North American South was said to be the most haunted place on earth. Not because many died there during the civil war but because so many who died the since the founding of the country were so wronged in life and so forgotten in time, they were the most displaced and displeased of the dead the deep south could never be cleansed of the great evil which had taken place there.

In her family, it is said that in any given location at least five generations of ghosts linked to one bloodline can exist. And sometimes they grow powerful in their rage or sadness and act out in ways humans can feel and see. And rarer still, sometimes the earth itself can not confine the spirit in it and a remnant or undead is created.

Even her grandmother Ma Nell had sworn when she was a child her dead great uncle Ephrem had returned from the dead.

"Now, you know no child should be listening to the talk of grown folk but I couldn't help it. At first, everyone was scared to death a demon had come visiting.

But non, non, it were him, dear one. For almost a week a fuss had gone on then one day he did not come near to the house again. Return to the earth I think, though I were told that was a distant cousin who had lost his way from the lord drinkin' & druggin' and had just come to sleep & eat a few days before returning to his own home.

Ah, but I knew better, heard him call my own Nana 'Abeille' as he called her when she were a child. I knew him for what he was the moment I heard him say it."

Now sitting in the water which was rapidly growing cold, the deafening voices swirled through the air of the entire house making no difference as to whether she should leave this room and go to another. She knew she would hear the same thing in every room and only upon getting in the car and driving into town would it stop. Because for some reason when other people were around none of the spectacles of the haunting take place.

She had her suspicions but then Jim stayed the night on a night where she had felt certain something out of the ordinary was bound to happen. But nothing did. They had lain awake a while then both slept a little.

At one point she had been awake while he slept. She couldn't help looking at his face. His brow, nose, and beard somehow beautiful even though his face was completely passive. She wanted him to open his eyes and look at her so much. Something about what you could see in him through them. Inside, he was the most...God, there was just no word for it. At best the only word that came close was "real". He was the most real person she had ever met. There was pain & horror & kindness & humor, everything, all there in equal measure. She had never been so sure a person had a heart as she was that he did.

He had lived, truly lived. He had been places and seen things, had things done and been things that she was sure no other person ever had been. He had lived a singular unique life, just as the thing haunting her had died a singular unique death like no other person ever had.


	12. Jim VI

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tensions boil to a head and Jim finally gets some answers. The hard way.

Walking down the road at this time of night doesn't feel as wholesome as it usually does. Jim feels eyes on him and when he turns to look a coy-wolf is loping off into Cedar Park. A few moments later the same happens and it's the same culprit who has gained on him but doesn't seem to be actively chasing him.

By the time he reaches the corner, it stands beside him. The wolfing and he look into each other's eyes. He wonders if this is how predators of all species look at each other. Can it smell the blood? The old blood that he tells himself is gone, that he's clean of finally each time he showers, the blood on his hands, in his hair, on his face, in his eyes and mouth. The gallons of gore he's loosed from countless bodies during his thirty-year murder spree. Did he look at them as he killed them like this? Detached and cold, uncaring and callous to their fear of him?

Jim faces forward and keeps walking in the snow with the young wolf hybrid padding beside him.

"It's very fitting you showed up. You going to Malberg Bridge too?"

The coy-wolf looks forward walking beside Jim as if Jim is walking it.

"I wasn't sure till just now. See, I've been noticing how very Disney the animals have been around these parts lately. I said to myself, 'Self, if we got up tomorrow with two mice making a ball gown at the foot of the bed, would that be weirder than if I walked out of the house to go have a look around and found myself being scouted by a neighborhood stray or two? Would it get even weirder if I found out someone sent it to follow me?'

So I did just that. And low and behold, some nice fuzzy critter just shows up to say hello. A very strong, very cunning fuzzy critter. This has got to be more than a little coinci-dink. Why does it seem like I'm under surveillance? Why are there people in this place who aren't at all who they say they are? Shane can't be the only anomaly here. I wonder, could I flush you out of hiding if I considered the first people I run into to be behind what smells fishy? What if I...saw the first car trying to pass on the bridge and just...pulled everyone in it out and decided to ask some questions?

Maybe if you get here in time, I won't kill them, maybe I can get an answer to the question 'Why... does it seem like I am involved in a conspiracy?'"

~~~

'Have to stop him. have to get there before... if he kills me then they'll take over and put him back down in the freeze, no one else has to die if I can hold him off till they come. But if he hurts anyone else, they'll kill him. So have to stop him. It's go time. This is my only purpose.'

~~~

As they approach the bridge the coywolf stops and backs away looking this way and that before turning tail and sprinting off into the dark.

The message has been clearly received. It's late enough that no should be out here unless they have been summoned. No one is going fishing and every one has gone home because it's well after closing time. Only the locals dare use this bridge. So literally the next car to pass him may be full of people showing up to exterminate him.

Fuck it. Nothing would make him happier because nothing makes him happy at all anymore. Jim lights a smoke and stands off to the side of the bridge exit. From here he'll see around the bend if a car is headed his way and can meet it before it enters the bridge.

And sure enough, after a few minutes, he can see a vehicle coming down the slope of Daggett Hill making it's way to the bridge. He walks forward entering the bridge and walks it's length and waits at the perfect spot. No one will see him standing there as it tries to pass so he'll be able to hop on it's hood and grip the roof if the people inside look even a little like a small tach unit.

The car is almost on top of him. He gets ready to react as soon as he gets a look at the folks in the vehicle. But well before that happens he hears a thud on the snow-covered ground and a shout behind. "Waaaiit!!! Jiiim, WAIT!" the voice wails into the air thick with snow.

Surprise, disappointment, and anger explode in his mind for a moment but his instinct takes over. If there is going to be a fight he has to win, he won't let his feeling get him murdered, it's how he's stayed alive this long in the first place.

He turns slowly to face his opponent.

~~~

The tale light behind Caleb catches Jim's eye. The red glimmer flashes for a second as the car starts turning around the bend. As it was, Caleb had no use for fear nor a show of it at the moment, but he conceded the truth to himself that the situation was bad and without training he would be overcome with terror, unable to move an inch under Jim's wrathful gaze.

"I'll give you one chance. Don't lie to me."

"All right. It's because it is. I am not who I say I am." Caleb replies, "Jim let me explain-"

There was second in which the words lingered in the air before Caleb's next sentence. In that breath, Jim has decided to strike. He came on low and fast, too fast for anyone to react. Caleb didn't want to do it, but he-

As much as he loved and respected Jim Caleb couldn't let it go further. "I'm sorry!!" He cried.

He raised a hand palm out and took all control of Jim's body. He forcefully regulated Jim's breathing to begin calming him. He stopped Jim in his tracks and inside Jim was aware of what happened and was raging against it with all his might. There were rapid blows of Jim's will falling upon Caleb, but they have zero impact on Caleb's fortified mind.

"Jim, please..! I don't fight! I protect! I don't want to do this, you have to calm down!" Caleb tells him.

'Will you look what you are fucking doing to me, who the hell are you protecting besides your own ass?!' Jim shouts out to Caleb from his mind. 'And your eyes... what's wrong with your eyes?' He has noticed twin dots of red glowing in Caleb's eyes which are obscured by shadows.

"Them!" Caleb shouts gesturing toward the town as a gust of wind kicks up blowing snow around. He ignores the unimportant questions about his physical body. " And you! I can't let you hurt anyone! Including yourself. If I can't guarantee you'll go home and stop picking at the edges of this place, picking at the edges of yourself, I must remain with you and restrain you if you become physically violent. I won't leave your side, even if you're mad right now, even if you never forgive me!"

And quietly, only to Jim, before he could stop himself he answers honestly. His truth, sadness & inadequate feelings quite papable. 'Don't you understand yet? Sooner or later I thought you would notice. It's a birth defect. Everything that stands out about me is.'

'Get-Are you inside me right now?! Get the fuck-!!' Jim plows on growing further enraged.

"I-I'm sorry, I-I was just- ...here..." Caleb says. He is miserable. He did it again. He didn't ask first and he's touching Jim in a way that would violate anyone. Every lovely thing he & Jim were is crumbling under the weight of his manipulations. Nothing can ever be alright between them, there's no way. But he can't think about that right now, he has work to do. He projects his presence and just like that Jim goes from feeling as if every cell in his body is paralyzed to feeling two strong arms on either side of him take hold of his upper arms. Jim sees nothing there only feels as if two men of his equal stature & musculature are restraining him

When he does not lunge forward the restraint on his right disappears. The left holds firm as if he is guided by a sober friend while drunk. "What the hell...is that? Who's there?" He gestures.

"It's just me. This is a part of the real me. This is really how I interact with the world, I bypass my physical perimeters with psionic limbs. I lose some control of my physical body though and my control of my power can slip, so it's not that good of an idea to use it too much." He explains. A second of silence passes and his grip on Jim's arm loosens. Jim makes no violent moves.

"Is that all you wanna tell the truth about right now? You are young but you've been in the shit and know I can't just trust you not to kill me as soon as I look away." Jim says.

"Please, come back to town with me. I will explain this whole mess and -well, I don't know what happens after that. I'm just so tired, tired of lying, tired of being afraid, tired of the cold coming out of you. I want my friend back. I have a job to do and I will always carry out my mission, but not like this. I don't fight and I'm not going to force you to do anything. You realize you're a very dangerous man most days, it's just today you got scared and if I didn't do it you could kill me more ways than you can cook a potato. I know I'm scaring you, and I'm sorry."

Jim is silent for a long time. Then he replies, "Only because it's you. You will walk ahead of me I will hold onto your neck and if your limbs or anything else touches me, I'll break your neck."

"Fair enough. I'm sure you know the kinds of things I've been trained to do with my enhancements."

Releasing his holds on Jim, Caleb remains still with his arms up at his sides. His legs are slightly spread just in case Jim wants to search him for weapons, though truth be told the only weapon he really has even needed is his mind. He passively allows Jim to come to him. Jim grabs his shoulder and shoves him to make him turn around. Caleb then feels Jim metal hand take hold of the back half of his neck. The hand clamps onto him to a very specific amount of pressure that to Jim reassures if Caleb intended any kind of table turnings he would be met with a swift death. Caleb allows him to think he has no means of escape knowing, in reality, he could simply immobilize Jim again and using his ability to affect physical matter carry him to his house, unlock his door and usher him inside.


	13. Jim & Caleb II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A resolution is reached as Caleb helps Jim soothing his mind and pain.

The walk back to Jim's still is the scariest thing Caleb ever did. He contemplated every step and every move he made so as to not do anything that could be mistaken for an attack. With all of his combat training, he knew the sort of things that would red flag Jim. He attempted to talk but Jim shut him down.

"Keep it to yourself, don't distract me, I might think you're trying something. Wait till we get to the house." His voice is empty of emotion, his tone calculated and cold.

And so Caleb did as he was told. So far as he was concerned his mission was a success. No one was dead and Jim could still move his body of his own volition. He shut his trap and walked. Upon reaching the house Jim handed him his house keys over his shoulder and made him open the door.

"Light switch is to the right. Turn it on." He demanded before allowing Caleb to enter the house.

They walked in and Jim searched Caleb for any weapons. In his jacket, he discovered a manila packet folded in half with his name in very familiar writing.

"Who gave you this?" Jim asked shucking out of his boots and coat, leaving them in the hall on the floor.

"The same person who tasked me to keep an eye on you. Fury." Answers Caleb being sure his tone is completely complacent.

Jim hands it back and says "Oh, really? Open it. If it explodes, I don't want a face full." He snarls being mean out of spite, but he doubts Caleb would be running around with a bomb in his pocket unknowingly. He wanted to yell or argue but he knew it would lead nowhere and that this was just a symptom of what had gone wrong. He was intensely hurt by the idea Caleb had been getting close for, forget nefarious, professional reasons. His mind harkened back to the time they shared in his kitchen. He felt an almost begrudging pulse of lust for Caleb. Then images came to his mind: red purple tentacles wet and slick dripping a thick clear viscous fluid. On the heals of that, a pile of worms swimming in slime against each other. The slime reminded him of cum, the kind that comes from a well pleased woman. _'Jesus, fucking fuck!! God, what is wrong with me?'_ he cried in the silence of his own mind.

Caleb unwinds the string keeping it shut and takes out first a photograph, a letter, and a card, handing each to Jim one by one.

The photo is of Nickelle Fury, a severe woman with an eye patch over her left eye with Agent Pollock Carter, a dark haired smartly dressed man, the guy who Steve knew that helped Jim get out of Hydra. In the photo, they are shaking hands and each holding one side of the packet. In the background, Jim could see a bit of a calendar behind them. This photo was taken the same month, a year after he got out. They've had this down as a possible eventuality. May very well have trained Caleb since he was a small child to contend with Jim. He can think of no other way they could have hoped to bring him down or in should the need arise. Thank god he is not as far gone as they seemed to think he could go. At least he can understand what is happening.

He kinda knows what the letter will say. "Calm the fuck down, you crazy piece of shit. You are fucking too crazy and dangerous to not keep an eye on. Sincerely yours, the actual members of S.H.I.E.L.D." 

He is about to speak when Caleb speaks first.

"Project White Winged Dove. It wasn't just for you, but I was. I was never surprised you don't remember me. They had a hard time trying to find an adult who could go hand to hand with you and so began scrubbing for enhanced people who, even if they were still minors, could be trained in the event the Winter Soldier reform ever derails. You yourself taught me everything I know.

I'm gonna tell you all the truth I can right now. And forever. Because... I need you to know I would never hurt you. I really care about you. So here goes.

I am telepathic and telekinetic. I use telepathic illusion to shape your perception of how you feel the contact I make with you and telekinesis to make said contact, when I need to. The other way I work, I can take control of other living things like people or animals, right down to their cells. I could give you cancer or another arm, make you blond or eat a crepe if I wanted to. And I could watch you do it from anywhere. We think as long as I have met you in person I could be in your body, doing those things myself.

I have been using nonhumans who live in the town proper to keep an eye out for you or anyone trying to get to you. We can't risk you being controlled again. And..." He says a bit more meekly "if you don't mind me saying, you've worked too hard for it all to come crashing down."

Caleb continues, "But anyway, animals, the smaller the better; humans not so much. Too much power leak, I can't keep it all in one place for very long. And the more I use, the more robust it becomes. Think of a gas tank that when nearing empty just grows bigger and somehow the liquid inside grows in volume to fit the proportions, so even if there is a quarter of a tank, the tank itself can be any size.

We really don't understand what my limits are yet. I can't seem to fix my disorder with it, so that's a bummer.

Beings I control all vary in degrees, distances, and lengths of time. During that time I can not move my own physical body very much. During times of immobilization, I can project what is called an astral form, either a copy of one or more of my own body or multiple limbs of different types. They can go unseen and interact with physical things the way my physical body does.

I am not to use this ability for combat. I meant it when I said I can hardly move anything thicker than syrup. I take medications to dampen it down, it works like a psionic muscle relaxant. Otherwise, I'd lose control while sleeping.

I am well disciplined in telepathic cloaking, detection, communication, and mnemokinesis, specifically detecting changes to memories and removing thoughts and memories. I just stopped using my cloaking ability when using animals to watch out for you, since the that day... Just to be clear, no, I have never removed yours. " He explained quite formally, fussing with a string on the cuff of his left sleeve.

"Okay, that is way more than I thought you'd say. Wow. What a mouthful." Jim said blowing out a big exhale with his cheeks puffed out and lips pursed, his hands on his hips. "If you are telling me the truth, I appreciate it and can understand how I have been alarming you. I know I've been acting like I've lost my mind, I can explain that." he makes a gesture with his hands first the right pointing over his left shoulder with his index finger then left pointing over his right followed by a shake of his shaggy damp hair before gesturing behind himself once more this time with both hands closed with thumbs extended as if he is trying to explain geographic directions incorrectly. "Well, some of that." Jim sighs, placing his open hands in the air at chest height pushing down to his waist with a big breath exhaled. He takes another breath and repeats this before continuing.

"Where ever we go from here, I just have one request. If you are asked to watch me, don't do it in secret anymore. Call me, visit me, make me talk. I now understand none of this, well this part of it, would have never happened if I had trusted my friends and asked for help. I'm not used to having help or solving problems without breaking something. But I know I have to change, I have to learn to do things differently. I can hardly look at you now, I'm so ashamed," He says with a huff then continues, " For a moment you were in serious danger because I'm a fucking lunatic who doesn't know how to just be normal. I have to learn I am not alone anymore and I have to care for my friends better than I have been." Jim says.

Caleb, God bless his soul, only blinks twice in bafflement at Jim's change in mood then nods seemingly to himself now reassured Jim is going to kill him.

"Listen, I've been having some... odd experiences. I have also been experiencing some psychological problems. What you just said explains some of it but, I'm still... going through something. I think I am either going insane in a totally new way than usual, have encountered a local enhanced child in multiple places around town including my own bedroom, or am at the center of a haunting, mostly by someone I k-killed... when I was...w-was...the Winter Soldier." those last two words come out of his mouth with a shudder in the tone of a child who knows the boogeyman is real. And unfortunately, a quite unhinged laugh tore free from him as soon as this statement was out of his mouth. "Yes, I'm pretty sure it's a haunting now, though. I'm very sure such things are real. I'd tell you all about it, but you might want to sleep tonight, ha."

"Under other circumstances with someone besides you, I'd have assumed you have lost touch with reality and would keep you restrained till I update with my contact. I have seen you doing some questionable things over the last few months. I mean, take the day I lead you home from the store." Seeing the look on Jim's face Caleb continued, "I was two of them. I chose the bird to check your breathing, pulse, and the dilation of your pupils. The rabbit was because I wasn't sure if you could see properly. From my point of view, you walked up the street, became startled and upset, then rushed to an empty spot on the sidewalk then ask a squirrel who his friend was. It was rather bizarre."

"I wasn't... So you weren't...the squirrel was just..."Jim begins to ask with a slightly deflated air.

"No. But my point is, I was here the other day. I'll entirely be honest. I'm not lying about how I feel about you. And I know it's wrong... I just missed you so much and you didn't want m-me to get any closer. But I keep wanting you. So I came to see you and uhm I saw... i i-in the bath..." Caleb blushing deeply biting the corner of his lower lip, goes on, "When you were...b bu-busy, I began hearing the voice you also heard. I actually went downstairs in a spider long before you did and took note of the temperature change and mood there. I thought things like that didn't really happen a long time ago but I've had some experiences in Jansenhaven that support the possibility."

"What kind of experiences? Oh, but- you heard that? The crying?" Jim asked unabashedly comforted that someone else experienced it as well.

"Yes, Jim. It incapacitated you for a while. I tried to get your attention but you couldn't hear I guess. I didn't use telepathy because I didn't want to invade you again, I know you didn't like that very much when it was telekinetic. I got hold of a raccoon and was gonna break in and at the very least dial 911 for you. As for my experience, we can talk about that stuff later if you want. Right now would you mind if took an assessment of your physical and mental state?"

"I guess I have to, huh?" Jim supposed Caleb wouldn't just assume everything was fine and there was nothing to worry about. "I...think I'll grab some water first. Want something to drink?"

"Yes. I need to know what to tell my mom." Caleb said. "Yes, please. I was prety much swinging through the trees on my psionic limbs like George Of The Jungle on the mountain side there to get to you. I'm totally whipped."

"Your what now?"

"I'll explain later. Let's get some drinks and sit. This will only take a bit."

After retrieving two glasses of water Jim returned seeing Caleb had seated himself on the floor at the coffee table. Jim did the same.

"Do you think you can tell me about the two things in your life that worry you the most?" Caleb asks as soon as Jim has made himself comfortable.

With a stricken look Jim reaches up pushing his hair back the gripping it with both hands as if he is going to pull it out. He blinks and when his eyes open again they are wide as if he is trying to see everything that is a problem in his life at the moment. ' _It feels like there is too much, too many, too many things are broken-_ '

"Take a breath, Jim. Tell me what you feel most strongly at this moment. " Caleb asks gently.

Jim closes his eyes letting go of his softly waved dark brown hair. He takes a breath and says "Pain. I am in pain. " almost instantly.

"Physical?"

Jim nods.

"Will you let me use telekinesis to help?"Caleb asks. "I will never enter your body or mindscape without you knowing or consenting, I know other people don't like that."

Jim nods.

A hand rests on his shoulder a moment then sinks beneath his skin. He can feel another on the back of his neck doing the same.

As Caleb works, Jim asks "You said I've met you before? Really? Can you tell me... am I why you..." and continues without meaning to but also understanding Caleb can hear but will chose to behave as if he has not heard unless Jim lets him know he wants him to hear, which Jim does '. _..feel the way you do? Did...did I do something, say something that took advantage of you during that time? Did I do something bad to you? Did I... prey upon you and make you think you like it?_ '

With a smile, Caleb answers him. "Uht uhn. No. You were kind and good to me, always. I didn't speak to many people outside my family. You were one of the select few. I remember you were very sad though you tried not to show it and very confused about what was going to happen next. You wore long sleeve turtlenecks and gloves when you were with me to protect my sensitivities. We only worked together for about six months. You taught me my enhancements have a use and it made me really happy. You taught me how to fight with a knife, use a pistol and how to read other people without getting in their minds. You taught me how to be comfortable and love my body by teaching me how to dance. All so I could confidently go toe to toe with you if ever I needed to. I only started having those feelings when I started my new route at work. I mean that is how I make money, it is important too. Before then I considered myself your guardian angel and nothing more."

As Caleb speaks he shares images of the events he refers to with Jim. Jim sees himself working against a wing chun dummy an echo of his voice saying "Block! Strike! Strike! Strike!". Then a pair of small hands thrust forth and he takes note this is all from Caleb's perspective. A ripple through the dust motes shows his psionic limbs mimic Jim's moves with the same intesity of strenth. He turns to look back at Jim who nods and gives him a thumbs up. Another memory of them together as they practice 1st, 2nd, & 3rd Arabesques then croisée. "Good, a strong hold, right..." Jim says. A flash of another memory Caleb is playing dancing as he wishes it is a mix of fight moves, telekinetic manipulation of his body and his new ballet skills. Jim watches with a smirk arms crossed when Caleb finishes with a flourish turning a perfect pirouette with the power of his own mucsle and nothing more. Jim throws his hands up saying "Bravissimo!" Then images of Jim trying to attack Caleb in mock battle. It is obvious that time passes with each recollection and with each Caleb's skill becomes more and more perfected. Before long Jim can never get within 10 ft of Caleb. The program is finished and they part after shaking hands, Caleb with his small one and Jim with his gloved.

"I'm sorry I can't remember. I'm sorry you had to do it, but I'm glad you learned well." Inside he thinks, _'I'm proud of you. I'm glad I wasn't that kind of monster as well.'_

The images culminate on a memory of Jim from some time during the summer. Jim sees himself the way Caleb saw him then. Everything is in slow motion like a scene in a movie. Jim is laughing and turning his head. His hair fluffed by the breeze, Jim's eyebrows go up in pleasant surprise. Then he looks up and directs his gaze at Caleb, who's usual custom is not looking into other's eyes. Jim is filled with Caleb's emotions from that day.  He looks and glad he did this time. As he looks he discovers he wants to keep on looking forever. Jim's eyes draw him in, two cerulean pools overflowing with kindness and joy. Caleb feels as if he is falling, something is rushing up to meet him. It's inside of him somewhere, something no one ever knew was there has woken and he feels it's right, it's all right to fall. Because it's all right to fall in love. It's the only way you can fall and even if it hurts, you never would choose to be without. The images and feeling fade.

"You are not a monster. You are not a bad person. You have had a hell of a life and still, you try so hard to be a version of yourself you can feel proud of. You are my hero for not saying _'I'm messed up so I'm gonna do messed up things. It's not my fault if others get hurt, someone hurt me.'_ And I don't care what you say, I love you. Not you in some other time and place, you now. Sick, tired, troubled, whatever you are, however, you are, now." Caleb tells him. 

Being a born and bred smart ass, Jim has nothing to say for once in his life. A small part of him seems to pump it's fist in triumph, for it recognized the feeling that blossomed in Caleb, having known the feeling he has been developing for Chantoya, Caleb & Shane was love all along.

The sensation of the hand's temperature is similar to that perfect level of warmth you get when you turn on both hot and cold water from a single faucet. It will seem your mind cannot decide whether it is more on the side of hot or more cold. The hands glide down into his body causing no pain but leaving a trail of blessedly cool numb behind on everything they touch then the sensation warms almost to a point of being hot. The hand on his shoulder walks it's fingers over the muscle and tendons along his left side while the other does the same down his spine then back up the muscles and the tissue connected to the hardware. A third hand comes to set at his temple the thumb resting over the markings of the blue girl. With a sensation of incredible depth, the hand pressed forward on a diagonal toward the back of his skull. The blaring pain began to lessen significantly. 

After months, Jim breathed a sigh of relief. 

"Is this better?"

"Yes. The marks...they still hurt a bit. They weren't a physical injury I don't think. The pain from them was changing how I think, I was starting to be unable to make sense of some pretty simple concepts."

"I'm glad I could-" Caleb was saying but stopped abruptly. Then " -oh no... " he muttered the bottom left of his face going a bit slack.

Caleb's body waivers, he reaches clumsily forward knocking over several things. He grasps the cup of water and drags it toward himself as if it weighs 20 pounds. With it finally closer breathing heavily "...I overdid it. Earlier I was just so scared..." he murmurs. Out of his pocket, he takes a small pill case and begins trying to open it.

His hands shake as he tries to take one pill out, he spills several onto the table. his shoulders slump now and there's a weird feeling in the air like static electricity. Jim can see some of the pages on a book on the table beginning to lift some of the pills rolling around even though Caleb's not pushing them with his fingers his hair is starting to fluff about him as if there is a wind in the room with them.

He throws a pill in his mouth and knocks back a sip of water he appears to be growing weaker, his posture is starting to slouch like he is going entirely limp.

He passes out, falling backward between the couch and the coffee table. On his way own he rather comically throws Jim's cup over his shoulder. Jim watches as half way to the floor it stops it's decent and spins slowly on a slanted axis. There is a low buzzing that has been sub-audible for a few minutes now but is growing into a rapid drumming. Jim turns around and looks behind himself at the source of the noise. The lamp is sliding around on the side table and the table is trembling like someone is trying to lift it straight up with one hand and is losing balance. Jim feels several random tugs on his sleeves and hair, even felt something the size of a softball pushing back his right shoulder. As he sits he notices a growing rumbling which seems to be caused by everything in the room he's in being to be manipulated by unseen forces. The painting above the fireplace, the clock beside the window, the couch, the chair. It grows louder and louder until Jim is sure everything in the little house is rattling on their shelves & tables, hell, he can hear the silverware clanging around inside the drawer and the cupboard doors quickly fluttering against their frames. He can hear water splashing upstairs and knows what he'd see if he went up and looked in the toilet: water sloshing about as if being carried none too carefully in a pail.

Then as slowly as it began it winds down again then stops entirely.

He turns back and looks at Caleb. Well, he wasn't lying about his control, he is indeed clumsy with the powder keg in his head, he does have trouble moving anything thicker than syrup. It'd be hard for Jim to use his arm while asleep or losing control of it, too.

The boy's (for in Jim's mind, Caleb is too young for this kind of shit) face is very troubled. His long eyelashes lay very prettily against his cheek, his skin still rosey from the wind outside. His lips are in a little pout and his brow is furrowed. Jim wonders if he's having a nightmare or is aware somehow of what is going on outside himself? Did the pill knock him out or did it immobilize his kinetic effect keeping him from letting loose a tornado of kinetic power in Jim's house? Was he still aware but unable to move? He could kill him and pick up stakes and run, but if Agent Carter is on the level, Jim just needs a therapist and maybe an exorcist or exorcism classes...

Feeling bone tired he gets to his feet and gets Caleb off the floor. He is light in Jim's arms; his head flops back over Jim's right arm. There is a fine fuzz on his cheek that Jim just wants to rub his face in.

Jim is so angry, so confused and so in love, the breach of trust feels like it's killing him. The paranoia doesn't usually go this far. He just had to keep digging. But he now is disappointed that his suspicions turned out correct this time. He wants the knowledge to go away just so he doesn't have to feel the hurt anymore.

He's never fallen for a target before but has seen it happen, he can remember that all it lead to was pain for the two involved. It is the first thing Jim remembers about becoming lucid, watching confused as a man's heart was crushed before his eyes. He can remember the deceptive party lost his edge entirely and for months tried to live with the burning shame & absolutely undying desire washing away all reason. He saw the panic then final resolve in his eye when the deceptive one decided to come clean. His love was killed and he was deemed weak but before they could dispose of him the guy went mad with grief, Gustovovich killed himself.

He doesn't want this for Caleb, he doesn't want this kind of life to crush this boy's heart & soul. Even though he realizes as young as he is, Caleb is no boy. He can see five different ways Caleb can get hurt. Even as a minor he must have had to grow up so fast. Jim feels a feeling like petrifying terror when he thinks about Caleb living mentally as an adult to survive the world of enhanced politics and covert operations. Has he ever had to kill anyone? How many corpses has he seen? Has he ever been interrogated and tortured? Jim can only think of awful things that could happen to a child caught in the grinding teeth of political, economic or organized criminal espionage. 

He feels like if Caleb were playing him and there is no doubt Caleb could, Jim knows what kind of training spies worth their salt go through, Jim thinks he would see something further in passed the real guilt, a kind of trail of tells leading back to the truth that guilt is being redirected from.

He rests Caleb on the couch laying him on his right side, and even though he is physically and mentally drained he can't leave Caleb's side. Jim sits on the floor beside the couch resting his right arm on the cushion and his head upon it. He can look directly into Caleb's face this way. He hopes Caleb can feel him there. He tentatively raises his metal hand. He wants Caleb to wake up and know he doesn't have to be afraid, doesn't have to fight or protect himself. Jim brushes Caleb's hair back caressing him softly so as not to wake him. He dozes gently if uncomfortably and wakes when he hears forlorn quiet sobs & sniffles beside him. They have a lot to talk about but being apart from each other is not one of them.

 


	14. Epilogue

Jim is suddenly standing at the end of the walkway looking at his house. He has been asleep in bed for once without all of the negative aspects that had arisen at the onset of winter. Now he is barefoot in pajamas standing stock still wide awake outside of the rectory. The ground is so cold his feet are starting to numb.

It had been a week since things had come to a head and then four of them had decided that a rather formal meeting and intervention was the correct course of action to begin moving into the future. It had gone well, Jim's three paramours had bonded quickly in their concern for him and he had fallen hard for each of them than ever before. Somehow he knew things would be all right now.

Beside his door stands the blue girl. He had previously been shocked and terrified by her but something has changed. And now unlike the times she appeared before, he feels drawn to her. The magnetism feels good and right. Like it will only result in good for her and for him. He must go closer. If this is going to come to a resolve he must go.

He walks slowly taking note of the moonlight casting his shadow beside him in the snow on the lawn. He thinks he's awake, he can see puffs of air in front of his face with each breath, he can feel some wind tugging his pant legs and shirt sleeves. As he walks the young child raises her hand toward him as if waiting for him to take it.

When he arrives beside her, he does take her hand. This fills him with calm. It is warm, alive. She closes her little fingers around two of his big ones.

"It's time." She says.

"Time for what?" He asks.

"Time to let go." She answers turning toward his front door.

At that moment the front door slowly opens revealing a blinding white glow. As she steps forward, she pulls him along and the two figures disappear into the white light.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading this far! Please support with your kudos and comments if you like the story!!


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